


How to Firebend (for airbenders)

by dogspeed



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Airbending & Airbenders, BAMF oc, Chaotic Neutral is her middle name, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gratuitous Worldbuilding, I'll add more tags later, Light Swearing, Morally grey OC, Original Character(s), Slow Burn, Some Humor, Some mature themes, Worldbuilding, Zuko is an awkward turtle duck, Zuko's POV, airbender oc, its gonna mostly stick to canon but there's gonna be a few changes here and there, more like adventure romance, ~spicy~ scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:46:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogspeed/pseuds/dogspeed
Summary: It's important to stay on the down-low when searching for the Avatar. With Sora, it never quite turns out that way, no matter how much she tries. So now she's ended up on the ship of a notoriously caustic Fire Nation prince with anger issues- as a prisoner. She'll talk her way out of it, if she doesn't die of boredom first.--------This story is my way to explore Zuko's sweet, delicious character arch, a romance better than one with Mai (which is a low bar), and ATLA's wonderful (though at times sparse) worldbuilding, though I think I'll be adding a lot of my own stuff.
Relationships: Zuko (Avatar)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 73





	1. Well, It Could Have Been Worse

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story on AO3! I thrive off of feedback and attention so if you even maybe kinda want to read more, please leave some kudos or a comment. I plan to post at least three chapters today, and I have a bunch of chapters stocked so I'll be able to post at least semi-regularly between school stuff (that is if anyone actually want to read this). Thanks!

Well, it could’ve been worse.

The cell, at least, was clean enough. A bit dusty, maybe, from lack of use, but not grungy or grimy like a prison. There were only two cells on the whole ship, with the single occupant being herself. The guards treated her cautiously, if not indifferently, and the food wasn’t rotten, though the tasteless rice could use some flavor. She didn’t know when they decided she wasn’t really a threat, just a lunatic, but the guards let her keep the eye-slot in the metal door of the prison cell open. So when she wasn’t eating, sleeping, or shitting, she sat, and waited, and listened.

The air inside the ship was stagnant, which meant the sound wasn’t terribly muddled but also didn’t carry as far. She guessed there were upwards an amount of thirty people on board, including the stubborn prince and the old man. She wasn’t entirely sure of the relationship between the two, and she thought she once heard the former referring to the other as “uncle,” but whether that was a title of respect or the truth of their relationship remained unclear.

At the beginning she swore to herself she would be a model prisoner. Gain the trust of the crew, then the trust of the man in charge. This lasted her approximately as long as the novelty of swindling her way into their good graces wore off, as she subsided into complete and utter boredom. So she decided to stick her nose into the business of the ship and out the eye-slot of the door.

There was little else to smell on the ship besides coal, unwashed bodies, ash, the briny scent of the ocean, and whatever they prepared in the mess (her nose told her it shouldn’t be classified as food). But sometimes, she caught a whiff of herbs or something of the like. Fairly regularly, actually, but she didn’t come to realize it was tea until the old man walked past her cell holding a freshly brewed cup.

She presses her nose against the slot in the cell and breathes the fresh, herbal scent, and focuses around it as the old man’s steps receded into some other part of the ship. She strains her ears until his steps stop, and she hears the squeak in the metal hinges of a door.

“Tea, nephew?”

“This again, uncle? I don’t understand your obsession with it. It’s nothing but boiled leaves.”

The old man laughs, and she holds her breath to hear “better a refined admiration for tea than a futile obsession with the Avatar. Here, its imperial jasmine and rosebuds from–“ but wherever the tea originated remained elusive as the door slammed over their voices and muffled the prince’s snappy reply.

She lets the scent linger in her nose long after the last whiffs fade into the recesses of the ship, and settles back against the door. The prince remains elusive, and she suspects that there was little that could get into his good graces, if at all. But maybe, she thinks, mentally recounting every fact she knew about tea, the prince isn’t who she needs to impress.

\---------------------------------------

“Oh my- is that what I think it is?”

Whatever it was, it wasn’t imperial jasmine and rosebuds. She caught the old man walking by her cell the very next day, and this is the closest look at him she’s got so far. He has a full beard, but no hair atop his head, and he seems rather pudgy and soft. It was unlikely, if he was as affluent in tea as she suspected, that he would only take one type on the ship. But maybe that didn’t matter.

“Your tea.” She was peering through the eye slot, trying to grip it right so she could stick her nose through and make a show of taking a deep inhale. She also got a noseful of tartness, citrus, and tanginess. By the Dragon, she hopes she’s right about this. “Orange,” she guesses, and more tentatively: “lemongrass? Very distinctive. But if I’m not mistaken… where it’s from…”

To her relief, he supplies: “Ah, a special blend from Gaoling.”

“I knew it! I have a very discerning nose, as you could guess. It’s why I have such a refined appreciation for the stuff. Tea, I mean.” She bites her tongue to stop babbling, but to her delight, the old man’s face lights up.

“You don’t say! So far out at sea, it’s hard to find another who is as passionate about tea as I am. Say,” he lifts his pot so she could see it through the eye-slot. “Would you like to have a cup with me?”

“Would I!”

The guards unlock her cell and lead her to another room. They did put cuffs on, but at least her hands were chained in front of her instead of around her back. She mentally mapped the passages and even caught a glimpse of a stairway that no doubt led up to the main deck and open air. She had never longed for it more at that moment, a few long strides away.

The room was finely furnished, though she would be hesitant to call it decorative. Proof of someone used to finery who still enjoyed it in its more practical sense for months at sea. So either he was very rich, or truly was a relative of that prince. She wished she had asked more questions about who exactly was on this ship. It seemed that all of her good ideas came in retrospect.

“You look famished. My good friend the cook made some gyoza, have it fresh before it cools. Have they not been feeding you enough in that cell?”

She eagerly grabs two fried dumplings without dragging her cuffs over the whole table and manages to find enough restraint to avoid shoveling them in her mouth. She answers as if she was a guest at his royal palace, and he had asked if her accommodations were quite to her liking instead of, in fact, a jail cell. “I have had quite my fill of cooked rice. But I suspect I could eat a barrowful of the stuff, and still be famished for food, if you catch my meaning.” He laughs.

“Yes, yes I do. Sometimes I still feel thirsty even after drinking my fill of water. Speaking of- did you have a sort of tea in mind?”

A test, and a chance to impress him. “I remember a certain blend you had earlier in the week… Imperial jasmine and rosebuds, I think.”

“Ah-ha! A good choice- a _very_ good choice. Very popular where I am from. Cook,” he gestures to a man near the door. “Bring the tea from Kaibun.”

The capital. She should have guessed. There was, after all, a prince on board, but any hope that it was just a weird nickname he insisted on vanished. She tried to hide her gulp behind another bite of gyoza and instead asks, “A favorite of yours?”

“A favorite? I don’t think the word does it justice. I have enough on this ship to last me a year and then some.”

She fakes a laugh, but she has to admit it came easy. There was something bumbling and jovial about this old man that she couldn’t resist. She grabs another gyoza. This one had salty pork. “I remember having something like it when I visited some time ago. There are many fine tea shops on the west end of Kaibun that I enjoy.” That, at least, wasn’t a bluff. She knew shit to nothing about tea, but she knew half a dozen shops just in Kaibun that knew shit about it, all visited courtesy to her father.

The old man’s eyes lit up. “You have been to Kaibun?”

“I said I was a tea enthusiast, didn’t I?”

He leans back into his cushion, and she gets the sense the action is supposed to put her distinctly at ease. “You said some time ago,” he rambles. “How recently?”

“Four years ago or so.”

He didn’t so much as deflate as settle into himself. “Ah. That is too bad. I was hoping to know how my city was doing more recently.” Once again her mind spun as to place exactly who this man was. Indeed, she hadn’t been to the fire nation in a while, and she hadn’t exactly been immersed in the politics when she was there. She knew the name of the crown prince but had no idea of any other princes who would be out so far from the fire nation. So if this prince indeed shared the same mother as the eldest, would that place this man on his mother’s or father’s side?

“A few months at sea would make anyone homesick.”

The sad expression on his face was not the look she was expecting. She imagined wistful, tired, even, but not despondent. Before she could decipher what it meant exactly, the door opened and the cook came in with a teapot and cups, and to her delight, more gyoza.

He must have mistaken her excitement for the tea, because he chuckled and said, “if you are anything like me, it must have been quite draining to be so long without tea. I can’t imagine my life without at least three cups a day, much less forgoing it at all.”

“It will just make this cup all the more refreshing.” She supposed she should have been staring at the kettle to really sell him on this point, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the spicy sauce the cook set down next to the gyozas. The cook and the guard that took her here bow deeply and turn to leave the room.

“Wait a minute!” The old man waves the guard closer. She did think it was rather foolish to leave a prisoner, though chained and shackled, in a room alone with an old man.

“How is she supposed to drink tea,” he says, setting a cup in front of her, “with those cuffs on her?”

It was hard to tell who was more surprised, her or the guard. But she couldn’t help a smug smile as the guard leans down to unlock her shackles. He’s young, as she peeks under the helmet, maybe a year or so older than her.

“What’s your name?” She asks amiably. The guard somehow looks more surprised.

“Er, um.” He says and looks to the old man. The old man just shrugs and he looks back to her sheepishly. “It’s Shou.”

“ _Very_ nice to meet you, Shou.” She puts on her most dazzling smile before turning back to the old man. “And goodness, you invite me to tea, and I don’t even introduce myself! My name is Sora.”

The old man just laughs. “I heard as much. You announced yourself very loudly when you first came on this ship.”

“Oh. Right.” She was hoping for his own name in return, but it looks like she would have to get it from the guards. “I guess in hindsight my demands might be construed as rather rude. Though I didn’t realize I’d be captured for it,” she added sulkily.

The old man takes the teapot and pours them each a cup. She tries to mimic the way he clasps the cup and deeply inhales the scent before taking a sip.

“Erm. Sir.” Shou fidgets in his stance by the doorway. “Should I–?”

“Ah! Shou. I did not realize you wanted tea as well. I would have asked for an extra cup.”

“… That’s alright sir. I’m not sure I have time to stay…”

“I see. I suppose you have duties to attend to. You are dismissed.” He said it comfortably as if he were used to addressing soldiers as such. Shou bowed low and left the room quickly, and she realized that they were quite alone, which she hadn’t at all expected. She did, after all, put up a decent fight before they stuck her in that cell. The soldier clearly had no qualms leaving this old man without any extra protection.

For the first time, she wondered if she was a bit over her head.

An uncle of the prince… a brother of the late queen, or a prince in his own right, in succession to the throne?

In her very limited knowledge of fire nation politics, she knew at least one name that fit the bill, and she didn’t like it at all. But then again, it didn’t match up with the quaint image of this man in front of her.

“How are you liking your tea?”

Her eyes snapped to the cup in her hand. “Oh! Very much. Thank you.” She took another sip. It _was_ good tea; she didn’t need to be an expert to know it.

“So, Sora. Where do you come from?” She lingered over her cup to measure her truths. How much should she tell? Or, should she try to turn the conversation and sweet talk _him_ for information?

The latter would be more prudent for getting off this ship. But that isn’t what she wants.

“Technically, I’m a fire nation brat. I was born in the crescent isles. But my dad and I traveled around a lot, so I never really considered it much of a home.”

“Well-travelled, are you? Where have you been?”

“It’s easier to say where I _haven’t_ been. The Southern Water tribe. Some of the more remote parts of the Si Wong desert. The southern air temple.”

“The southern air temple! No one can go there unless you have an Airbender.”

The logical next step in the conversation is the Avatar– to both their knowledge, the only known Airbender in existence. This would be her chance to reveal why exactly they are hunting the Avatar, but she’s not entirely sure she can do that without revealing her own intentions. She takes a tactical sip in her tea, trying to frame the question in her mind when the door bursts open.

She knows it’s the prince immediately. The first time she saw him, he was halfway across his ship sneering from the railing of the bridge. Now, he is much closer, though the set of his expression hasn’t changed. His glare is perhaps more poignant with the burn that mars the left side of his face, but she thought the effect was rather ruined by the sad state of his ponytail.

“Uncle! What is the meaning of this?”

She takes a deep drink. She’s seen the prince for all of two seconds, and she already wants to slap him.

“There is no meaning to this, nephew. We are just having a drink of tea. Perhaps you would like some?” The old man lifts the tea to show the prince what he’s missing.

“No! And I would appreciate it if you left our prisoner in her cell!”

“Ah, but I haven’t had such lovely conversation in weeks! You can have your own prisoner when you capture the Avatar.”

She glances back in forth between them. Was the prince _bickering_ with this old man?

“Hey,” she decides to push her luck. “I’m not escaping or anything. I’m not even causing trouble. Don’t I get a reward for being a good prisoner?”

“Prisoners don’t get rewards for being good!” He shouts.

“Oh really? How do you know? Have _you_ ever been in prison before?”

“Have _you_?”

She throws up her hands as if to say _what do you_ _think?_

The old man sighs and places his cup on the table. “Come, Zuko. She is doing no harm.”

“Wait, Zuko?” She turns back to the old man. “I could have sworn the crown prince was named Zuko.”

The old man shrugs. “Well. That is him.”

“I _am_ him!” The prince says forcefully. “And you can speak directly to me when you are addressing me!”

She scratches the side of her neck. “Ehhhhh. What’s the crown prince doing out here chasing the Avatar anyway? Shouldn’t you be back in the capital doing your, I don’t know,” she wiggles her fingers at him. “your princely duties?”

This, apparently, has struck a nerve. A very, very sensitive one. The prince’s face works from shock to annoyance to outrage.

“My duty is here, catching the Avatar!”

The old man groans and settles his head in his hand.

Perhaps there is more to this story than she previously thought. And Sora dearly, dearly wants to push, but she’s not sure that will work in her favor. “If you say so.”

“I _do_ say so. Now back in your cell!”

“Just wait a minute.” She takes an agonizingly slow slip from her cup. “I’m not finished with my tea yet.”

“I don’t care!”

“Zuko,” the old man says with a deliberately flat tone. “That is _very_ rude. You should not interrupt someone when they are finishing their tea.”

The prince’s eye twitches and she doesn’t miss the smoke that curls out of the fists balled at his sides.

“She’s deceiving you, uncle!” He levels a glare at her. “Taking advantage of your weak and trusting nature.”

She blinks and looks to the old man, and then back to the prince. “Oh! Is this the part where I’m supposed to deny it?” She taps her chin and thinks for a moment. “Well, I only just met you, so I can’t vouch for your nature.” She nods to the old man, and he smiles vapidly back. “And, well, I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to assume I’m deceiving you…”

“Ah,” the old man interjects. “Not really. Any tea lover worth their salt knows that Gaoling has the worst tea.”

She winces. She suspected that she didn’t really have him fooled, but it still hurt to be called out on it. “So where was that orange and lemongrass tea really from?”

“It was my own blend,” he said proudly. “Though ones like it are very popular in Ba Sing Se.”

She nods sagely. “It smelled very good. I shall have to try it next time.”

“Enough!” The prince fumes. “There won’t _be_ a next time, because you won’t be anywhere but your cell! She didn’t even _try_ to deny she was deceiving you!”

“Oops,” she says. “I’ll work on that. But the rest really _was_ true. I’ve been to Kaijun.” The prince glances sharply at her. “And I do know some very good tea shops. And the tea was very good, I don’t need to be an aficionado to know that–”

“Are you done?” The prince snaps.

“Well, no,” she pouts. “But I’m beginning to think that doesn’t really matter anyway.”

“Good, because it doesn’t,” he says crossly. “So now, I’m going to call the guards, and you are going _quietly_ back to your cell because you’ve wasted enough time that I could be catching the Avatar– “

“Chasing,” she holds a finger up in the air and ignores the scathing look she receives from the prince. “Chasing the Avatar. An important distinction. You can’t catch the Avatar if you don’t know where he is. Or where he’s going. Which is where I come in- I have a proposition for you.”

The prince’s eyes narrow. “I think,” he says slowly, as if he were talking to someone very dumb and incompetent. “You, a prisoner on my ship, are hardly in a position to make _propositions_. And if they are anything like the _propositions_ you made the first time, you will sincerely regret–”

She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, no no no, nothing like that. Though I think your response was blown a bit out of proportion– “

“You threatened my crew.”

“– I would instead like to offer my services– “

“And tried to steal my ship.”

“– to help, as you say– “

“With me still on it!”

“–find the Avatar, and capture him.”

“Unbelievable!” He stomps and turns to the old man. “Uncle, you have been awfully quiet. What do you make of this nonsense? Do you see now why prisoners should stay in their cell?”

The old man takes a slow sip of his tea. “I would like to hear more about these services she’s offering.”

The prince throws his head back and groans.

“I know where the Avatar is,” she says.

The next thing she knows her shirt is fisted in the prince’s hand and her back is slammed up against the wall, which knocks the back of her head against the metal. “ _Ow_.”

“Tell me.” His right eye is narrowed to a slit, and his left is practically closed. “Tell me where the Avatar is.”

She frowns. “I’m not sure I want to.”

He raises a fist level with her eyes, and she watches as flames burst to life and encase his hand.

“ _Tell me._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named the Fire Nation capital Kaibun. Kudos and comments are appreciated!
> 
> edit: I added spaces in between paragraphs to make it easier to read. Will try to fix the second chapter as well


	2. Back in the Cell

As the prince so vehemently requested, she was back in her cell. She even got away with a few walks above deck each day, and an upgrade from mushy rice and vegetables to sharing the crew’s menu.

Not without some turmoil on her part, however. She had looked at the flaming fist hovering in her face, and then glanced at the old man who hadn’t moved a muscle since she was pinned against the wall.

“I never did get your name.”

“I have many,” the old man says cryptically.

“Ever been to Ba Sing Se?”

He holds her gaze quietly, and for a moment she can see nothing of the bumbling old man of before. Just cold, fiery steel.

“Just once.”

“Not for tea, I imagine.”

“Unfortunately not.”

She sighs, and turns back to the prince and his own stony countenance. “Well, there’s nothing to be done, I suppose. I surrender.” She holds her hands above her head to emphasize this point.

“And the Avatar?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you where he is. Or rather, where he’s going. I won’t even be difficult going back to my cell.” She grins, and to his credit, the prince doesn’t even twitch. They _both_ remember how hard it was to wrangle her in a cell the first time, so really she’s helping them both here. “I just want a small favor.”

Such was her new arrangements in prison. She was even invited to a Pai Sho game with– and she still can’t believe it– General Iroh, Dragon of the West, and (almost) conqueror of Ba Sing Se. He had promised her the special blend of tea and more gyozas, which meant more food and got her out of her cell, and also had the added benefit of pissing off the crown prince to the high heavens.

She couldn’t have asked for much better. Well, actually, she could name a few things that need improvement, but she wasn’t about to complain.

“Hey, Shou,” she hisses. The guard was the youngest and probably the most junior officer on the ship, because he was the one who regularly gave her meals. He slides her dinner through the slot at the bottom of the door, and she wrinkles her nose.

“Could you have gotten me anything that wasn’t rice? I’ve had enough of that.” She examines the wooden bowl, which was chiefly rice with a bit of curry on top. At least it was salted.

“That’s what everyone _else_ is eating,” Shou responds. “And those were the prince’s orders.”

“Speaking of,” she pauses to shove a bite in her mouth. “On a scale of… one to ten. How mad do you think the prince is with me right now?”

“You’re asking me?” He says incredulously. She listens to him shift on his feet on the other side of the door and continues to inhale her rice. “Let’s just say that if he’s angry, it’s always the extreme end of the scale.”

“Huh,” she says, less to respond and more just because she has a lot of rice in her mouth. “Water?”

“Oh, here.” He shoves a cup through the slot and she gulps it down. “I don’t really know what happened in there, but I’m surprised you got away intact. Or just, you know. Not burnt. He was kinda a nightmare to deal with after.”

Sora has never seen such a tantrum as Shou is referring to, but she has plenty of fodder for her imagination. The prince has anger issues, to put it lightly, though he is surprisingly articulate. Mostly, though, he’s loud, and the metal hallways echo.

“Sorry about that.”

She imagines him shrugging on the other side of the door. “We’re used to it.”

She finishes the last few bites of her meal and pushes the bowl and cup back through the door. “I’m done.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, but I got kinda bloated from eating so quickly. Take me for a walk?”

He pauses uncertainly. “I’m not supposed to do that for another ten minutes.”

“So what?”

“He was very specific about the time I’m supposed to walk you…”

She groans. Shou was easier to talk to than some of the other guards, but he also had the backbone of a flimsy noodle. “Fine. Tell me this, then. Why is the crown prince of the Fire Nation out in the middle of nowhere chasing the Avatar?”  
“You mean you don’t know?” He sounds shocked.

She stands up to be closer to the eye slot in the door. To be honest, Sora thought that everyone would be tight-lipped about it, like maybe it was some secret mission so important that the crown prince had to undertake it.

“Well. I _am_ asking.”

Shou looks both ways down the corridor and then leans closer to the eye slot. “He was banished. Three years ago.”

“What?!”

“Well, more like two and a half. I’ve only been on this ship myself about a year, so I don’t really know the specifics as much as some of the others, but…”

“ _But_?”

“I really don’t know if I should be telling you this.”

Sometimes it was like pulling _teeth_ with this boy. “Ugh! Fine. No _specifics_. Just tell me general knowledge, so I don’t step on his toes the next time I meet him. Which really benefits you most, because _you’re_ the one who has to deal with his moods.”

“Okay! Okay. I don’t really know _why_ he’s banished, but he thinks bringing the Avatar back will somehow lift his banishment. He talks about honor a lot.”

She grunts. “Who banishes the crown prince? It’s like they’re _asking_ for a coup.”

“That’s treason,” Shou says nervously.

“What are you going to do,” she says sardonically. “Throw me in jail? Besides, I don’t know why _you’re_ talking about treason. I’m not the fire nation soldier helping the banished prince.”

“I’m not helping _him_. I’m loyal to General Iroh.”

“Semantics, apparently,” she mutters. But this is very useful to know, because she can extrapolate the loyalties of the rest of the crew. “Well, what do _you_ think of the prince? Is he a real prick? Stuck up? Moody just, all the time?”

“I don’t know,” he says in his wishy-washy voice. “He’s prince-like, I guess?”

She groans and rests her head against the door. “You’re useless sometimes. You know that Shou?”

He shrugs. “Not my problem.”

Sora’s day didn’t prove much from there. Her walk was a boring two laps around the upper deck, and then back in her cage. Not even her game with Iroh quelled her jitteriness. She was no master at Pai Sho, but she thought she would last a _little_ longer against the old man, especially since his strategy was not unlike her father’s, who she chiefly learned the game from.

To pass the time, she started doing pushups in her cell, crunches, squats, whatever helped with the twitchiness of staying still too long. She did stretches, backbends, handstands, every yoga pose she could think of, and held them until her muscles shook and cramped from exhaustion. But she could never do more than move in place. She desperately wanted to run, to leap, dive, do _something_ that moved her more than the six-foot space of her cell and faster than the pace of her daily walks. Occasionally, she thought of just diving straight into the ocean and swimming until her limbs failed her, but she knew His Assholiness would never try to pull her back into the boat.

She needed to do _something_ and _soon_ , otherwise she was going to do something _stupid_ , or go _crazy_ or _both_. It was little over a week ago since they left Chin, the little village on the coast, when her captivity began, but it felt like Sora had been rotting in here for decades.

Dragons help her if she ever landed in a _real_ prison, without nice old men to exploit.

She was practically chomping at the bit when Shou came by for her second walk. He could barely get her manacles on before she was out the door and making her way to the upper deck.

Shou opens the hatch for her to climb out of and then immediately ducks as a scorching ball of fire goes whizzing over his head.

“Oooooh! Is someone attacking? Is there an attack? Let me at em!” She tries non too gently to push Shou out of the way so she can see the commotion, but she only gets a glimpse of the prince before she’s shoved back.

“No!” Shou says all panicky. “The prince is just doing drills. We better not interrupt. I can just walk you around the lower decks– “

“Nonsense!” She puts on her most innocent smile. “I can keep out of the way. I want to see.” Also, if she sees another metal corridor she is going to punch something.

“No way. You’re going to get me in trouble.”

They stare at each other for a loaded moment. Shou is rigid, ready to leap in case she makes any wrong moves. He knows her too well by now. But then he crosses his arms, which is his fatal mistake–

She drops down and sweeps his legs from under him, but he can’t throw his arms out to maintain his balance, so he goes down, hard. “Sorry,” she winces, but doesn’t waste a second to leap over him and push the hatch open with her shoulder to the upper deck.

The prince _is_ training, and she’s almost disappointed that there is no attack to defend the ship from. He whirls in a spinning kick, and then turns neatly and throws a punch, fist encased in flame. The way he fights is like a dance, moving to a thrumming beat only he can hear. Mesmerized, she nearly doesn’t notice Shou come up from behind and tackle her.

She spins out of the way at the last second, and he belly flops on the metal deck, making a loud PWANG.

She bends down closer to him and clucks her teeth. “Next time, I’d suggest staying _off_ the ground.”

“What is going on here?”

The prince stops his exercises when he notices her, and doesn’t look that happy when he does. He’s sweaty, irritated, and shirtless- more sinewy than muscly, she notices, but Saza doesn’t doubt for a moment that he is as strong as he is quick. His stance is rigid and unwelcoming, so she knows they’re about to about to fall into one of their verbal brawls.

She straightens at the prince’s voice and tries to look as innocent as possible. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrow. “Then what is my soldier doing on the ground?”

She shrugs. “He tripped.”

He makes a noise of disbelief and addresses Shou. “Why are you interrupting my training?”

Shou scrambles to his feet and salutes the prince. “Taking her for a walk as you requested, s-sir.”

“And you thought,” his voice is dangerously low, “you should do it _while_ I am training? Do I only employ _imbeciles_ on this ship?”

“I tried to stop her!” He blurts.

Sora rolls her eyes. “Don’t be such a snitch, Shou.”

“ _You,_ ” the prince snaps. “Shut _up_. And you, do you mean to tell me that a prisoner forced you, a fire nation soldier, into doing something _she_ wanted?”

Poor Shou looks like he’s about to cry. “Yes, sir,” he mumbles.

The prince closes his eyes, and a tense sort of calm settles over him. His fists are clenched at his sides, veins popping, chest expanding, then contracting. He breathes in and out three times, and it makes Sora hold her breath lest she interrupt him. Then his eyes flare open and he punches to the side, sending a massive ball of fire over the side of the ship.

She watches as it goes careening a hundred or so feet out, sending a wave of heat billowing over her. She blinks once, and then says, “Well, uh, if you’re done, I’ll just have my walk and be done with all of this. C’mon, Shou.”

“Who said–” The prince whips around to face her, and by the look in his eye, the breathing exercises didn’t help a bit. “–that we were _done?”_

Sora rolls onto her shoulder as a blast of fire explodes where her head was. She continues her momentum onto her feet then jumps up, looping her chains under her feet to bring her hands in front of her.

“ _Finally_ ,” she mutters.

Didn’t she say she was going to do something stupid?

The prince doesn’t let up for a second. He sends two more blasts her way which she nimbly dodges. Behind her, Shou flattens himself to the side of the ship. There’s not much she can do with her hands chained, but there’s not much Sora wants to do but run, and that she does.

She takes off for the other side of the ship, towards the stern, jumping and leaping over scorching bursts of heat. The prince stops and makes chase, but he can’t bend as well running so she easily ducks out of the way of each lick of flame. Eventually she’s at the other side, and she turns to put her back against the metal wall of the bridge. The prince skids to a stop and crouches into his fighting form.

“Face it,” he breathes. “You’re cornered.” Is the prince a little winded? That’s sad. “Go back to your cell.”

“Cornered? Maybe.” She cocks her head. “But this is exactly where I wanted to be.”

Without giving him time to think, she jumps up and kicks off the wall, using the momentum to go crashing into the prince. She pushes her hands off his chest and vaults into the air, twisting around and landing feet first.

Someone claps, and she looks up to see Iroh at the railing of the bridge, cup in hand, looking nonplussed at the chaos below.

“Nicely done, Sora!”

Sora can only spare a grin. From the ground the prince sweeps an arch of fire at her feet, then aims a punch at her chest. Even if they don’t connect, she can feel the hairs sear off her arm. While she recovers he jumps to his feet, and lets loose a flurry of punches and kicks that even _she_ can barely keep up with, fast as she is. It’s exhilarating, but she’s had enough once his fist grazes the tip of her ear, and in the process nearly burns it off.

He kicks, kicks again, and then punches, exactly what she’s waiting for. Instead of dodging, she pulls her chains taut to meet his fist. She expects it to stop his fist, and thus his blow, but she miscalculates. His hand smacks into the chain, and fire blows up in her face.

She just barely manages to kick up a gust to blow the fire around her. She back-peddles, giving her time for the next blow, but the prince has stopped, wide eyed.

Did he guess? It was pretty obvious. She shifts from foot to foot, readying herself for his next attack. What would this mean for her as a prisoner? There has nowhere to run. Even if she knew which direction it was in, they were at least two days away from the nearest shoreline. She was not naïve enough to think she could fight her way through a thirty Firenation soldiers to steal a skiff, even without the Dragon of the West, eyeing her with a very curious expression, waiting for her to make a move. There was no way that Prince Zuko was going to let her out of her cell after _this_. He would stop making empty threats to her and instead order his guards to action, and that would leave her, well…

Boredom got her into this whole mess, and she wasn’t half as locked up as she could be, like once they realized she was a–

“ _Firebender_.”

Her mind blanks, then scrambles to make sense of it. “… what?”

“You’re a Firebender!” He snarls. “Don’t play dumb! You _bended_ my fire! I saw it!”

“I– that’s because–” she stumbles over her words, gaping openly at the prince. Firebender? _Firebender?_

He starts to move, circling around her, like a cat stalking its mouse, or like a cat stalking another cat that it is also very suspicious of. “What’s someone from the _Fire Nation_ doing on my ship? What are you up to?”

This time her jaw drops for a very different reason. “I– I made it _very clear_ I was from the fire nation! I told him,” she points to Iroh on the balcony, “I was born in the Crescent Isles. And I already told you what I’m up to! I want to help you find the Avatar!”

“Somehow,” he seethes, “I doubt you’re the type to be loyal to the cause of the Fire Nation.”

“Oh, no no. Don’t get me wrong.” She waves her hand dismissively. “I want no part of that. I want information.”

The prince stops circling, and doubt creeps onto his face. “Information?”

She nods vigorously. “That’s right. I’m uh, you see, a researcher. My father was very interested in the avatar cycle. Why they can control all the elements, why they are in general so good at being peace keepers.” She coughs into her hand. “Not. That. You know. It has gone so well for _this_ avatar, but that’s the gist of it.”

His eyes narrow, but his hands aren’t clenched so tightly at his side. “Then why not just go after the avatar yourself? Unless–” His eyes widen.

She yawns into her hand. “Took you long enough.”

“You _wanted_ to be captured? Why? What–” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You _used_ my ship. To get to the avatar faster.”

“What can I say? I’m no prince. I don’t have ship and crew at my disposal. The whole ‘threaten to capture your ship’ was just a ticket onboard.” She gave a lopsided grin. “Sure made you fight like rabbit-dogs for it, though.”

“Well what makes you think we’ll help _you_?” he snaps.

“I don’t.” The prince blinks, and she continues, “I help _you_. I told you I researched the Avatar, well I also researched this one specifically. I can pick his mind, predict where he’s going. You capture him, and I milk all the information I need when he’s in a cell. It’s a win-win. Bringing honor to my nation is an added bonus,” she adds flippantly.

“You mean the monetary reward.”

She grins. “See? Now you get it!”

“No,” he says, “I don’t. Why not just make this offer in the first place? Why go through the trouble of,” he spreads his arms to gesture to the general idea of “all _this?_ ”

“Ah,” she rubs her arm sheepishly. “Well, I only knew you were capturing the avatar, I didn’t know you were _looking_ for him. I needed to be on the ship, first and foremost. Worst case I could be confined next to him. Best case I could fight aboard your ship. It became abundantly clear you didn’t know where you were going about two days into my confinement.”

“And how did you figure that?” he growls.

“When you make a ship out of metal, it echoes. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Fine. Then why not tell me you’re a firebender? Why keep that a secret?”

“Made me seem like more of a threat. Doesn’t really work in my favor. So are we done here?” She puts her hands on her hips and leans to crack her back. “If you’re done grilling me and now realize the error of your ways, could you give me a real room and call it even? Also, food. I’m _starving._ ” Rice or no, she could inhale a whole plate of food. That fight took more out of her than she would like to admit.

“Now wait a second, I–“

“Zuko.” They both startle, because to be honest, she forgot baldy was there. “I know what you are going to say, and I am going to stop you for your own good. She is helpful out of her own free will, and will be less so if you lock her back up. Her circumstances, however mysterious,” at this Iroh shoots her a quizzical look, “are quite possibly the truth. She has told us that she believes the Avatar is heading to Omashu, but where next? He hasn’t stayed in one place for very long. And if she has as much information as she would like us to believe, then perhaps she knows.” He steps back from the railing and folds his hands in his sleeves. Dragon bless helpful old men.

“He’s got it on the nose, your majesty.” She grins at the prince, who scowls venomously. “It’s hard to remember what I know about the avatar when I’m stuck in a cell all day.”

The prince stares at her, clenching and unclenching his fists, and for a second she thinks he’s going to throw her the good old _go back to your cell!_ Instead, he straightens, and he looks very princely indeed, but mostly haughty, when he says, “one. If you call me _majesty_ again, I will personally throw you off this boat. Two, I still don’t trust you, so you can have your room out at sea, but you go back in your cell when we’re on land. Three.” He walks up to her close, leaning down to get in her face. She can see the sweat glistening off the bald part of his head. “You tell me everything you know about the Avatar. Right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize its kinda confusing where exactly in canon this takes place, and there will be more clues later, but basically this is before Iroh gets captured by earth nation and after Zuko finds Katara's necklace on the earthbender prison ship.


	3. Something Up There Must Hate Him

This girl is going to drive him up the fucking wall.

He loathes the day he imprisoned her on this ship. Two days ago he would have dumped her the second they touched land. Now she has vital information about the Avatar.

Spirits above, something up there must _hate_ him.

She’s sitting all prim and proper at the table where Uncle is pouring them tea, rubbing her wrists where the shackles were just removed. Somehow, it doesn’t take away from the grace of her posture, which could put half the imperial court to shame. He might’ve thought she’d grown up a court lady, if he didn’t know she had the manners of some backwater lunatic. She _did_ start a fight with him. Well. Technically, he started it. And attacked. And chased her, like a dog after a squirrel-cat. She didn’t even throw a punch, and still has the audacity to sit here like she just took a light jog, while he sits here with sweat and soot, suppressing the urge to smooth his ponytail.

The world was just unfair.

His uncle sets a cup of tea in front of her and she clears her throat. “So. The Avatar. What do you want to know?”

Zuko leans forward and braces his elbows on the table. “Where is he going?” For the benefit of his uncle, he tried to keep the haughtiness out of his voice, but by the unimpressed look she is giving him, it didn’t look like he succeeded. Of course, he would be rather unimpressed looking at himself too.

“Do you want the short answer, or the long one?”

“The short one.” The faster he could get this conversation over with, the less effort he had to put into social interaction. Also, they would get to the Avatar faster, which, come on Zuko, that should not be your second thought to _let’s skip the social interaction part because I suck at it_.

“He’s going to the Northern water tribe.”

That surprises Zuko. He thought for sure he would go to the air temples, or to find a master in the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdoms. Literally travelling across the world seemed at least inconvenient, at most a waste of time.

“Why?” He asks.

She sighs, “long answer it is, then.”

 _Just fantastic_ , thinks Zuko.

She takes another big gulp of tea and puts the cup down, tracing a finger around the edge of the cup. “It’s the duty of the Avatar to master all four elements. But they must also master them in a certain order. Since he is an air nomad, he must master water, then earth, then fire. It’s the same order as the Avatar cycle.” She taps her finger once against the cup and places her hand in her lap. “I’m not sure why that is, but that is undoubtedly where he will be seeking his next master.”

Zuko thinks this makes sense. Roku mastered air first, and earth last. But she also told them he was going to Omashu, which was _not_ the North Pole. “So you lied? You told us he was going to the Earth kingdom first.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I did not lie. He _is_ likely to be in Omashu.”

“ _Likely?_ ”

She shrugs. “Probably. Though this is less to do with Avatar matters, and more personal to him. The King Bumi claims that he was once a close friend of the Avatar a hundred years ago. However impossible, he is the same airbending Avatar from one-hundred years ago, so it seemed a safe bet that he would pay a visit to Omashu.”

“How interesting,” muses Iroh. “King Bumi doesn’t often make his friendship with the last known avatar public. How do you know?”

Zuko notices the curious way she examines his uncle, but she has a reckoning her way if she thinks _that’s_ confusing for his uncle.

“My father knew him. He told me many things about King Bumi.”

Which is another thing. Zuko doesn’t listen into many of the conversations between his uncle and her, but more than once she has mentioned this ‘father’ of hers. And whenever she has said something odd, it always seemed to lead back to him, yet she only gave vague details. As a topic of conversation, she danced around the subject of her father. It was not unlike a technique for fire nation intelligence to use a vague cover to feed false information to their enemies. She did admit she was fire nation, but Zuko has heard of very few fire benders who were not drafted into the army. And she clearly knew how to fight.

Zuko had expected this since his Agni Kai with Zhao. He knew it was only a matter of time before Zhao caught up to him, but frankly he never expected something so skeevy as planting a _spy._

But perhaps Zuko was getting ahead of himself. His uncle clearly trusts her, which for now, is good enough.

If trust was indeed the word for whatever this staring contest between the two of them was. Zuko is very familiar with the look on his uncle’s face, which means he is trying to get a read on her. Sora is flaunting a very similar expression.

Zuko ignores the intensity between Sora and his uncle, and turns his thoughts to the Avatar. If Omashu was indeed a pit stop to the North Pole, and by extension the Northern Water Tribe, then it would be best to go straight to the latter and hope to catch him there. Zuko is careful not to voice this in front of Sora, because he is still hesitant to trust her. He’ll just have to monitor the Avatar’s whereabouts on his way there, to make sure his path is consistent with what Sora proposed.

“So, what exactly do you plan to ask the Avatar once you catch him?”

He doesn’t miss how his voice snaps the tension between the two, and he wonders in hindsight if he should have been paying more attention. Sora gives him a glance out of the side of her eye. “Oh, it would probably bore you.”

Before he can become more suspicious at the non-answer, his uncle speaks. “I consider tea and Pai Sho my hobbies. I very much doubt much could bore me.”

Her lip quirks. “Well, my father is the expert on all this, but I did learn a lot from him. He is very interested in the intersections between bending styles, and how benders can sometimes step out of what is considered ‘element bending’ and into... ah, it’s hard to describe. But like how water benders can heal, and fire benders can create lightening.

“But only the really talented ones,” he says. _Like Azula. And my father._ “One day, Uncle will teach me too.” Zuko doesn’t look away from the challenge in Sora’s eye, ignoring the withering glare from his Uncle. Sora looks away first. Sensing a victory, he pushes, “so your father was a firebender?”

“No,” she muses. “I think sometimes he wishes he was.”

“Your mother, then?”

She shakes her head.

Zuko tries to hide his shock. It was very rare for bending to skip a generation. It was more likely to die out in the family line. “You must not be a very strong firebender.”

He knows its rude, but he’s a prince, so it really shouldn’t matter. To his surprise, she doesn’t deny it.

“Nope. Not at all. I could barely manage to cut through your blast earlier. I try not to use it much.” She bares her teeth at him. “Guess I’ll never bend lightening like you, _Prince Zuko._ ”

“ _Please,_ ” he seethes, trying not to roll his eyes. “Just call me Zuko.”

Apparently, this surprises her, because she blinks and turns back to her tea. “You should finish your tea, _Zuko_. It’s getting cold.”

“Any self-respecting _firebender_ can drink hot tea whenever they want.”

She sniffs in indignation and he snarls and his uncle sighs. “I see this discussion has turned rather sour and unproductive,” his uncle says. “I think I shall go take a nap.”

Sora slams her cup on the table and stands up. “I happen to agree. I think I’m going to train on the upper deck.”

Zuko jumps up. “You can’t do that! _I_ was training there!”

“Watch me,” she says, and darts out the door. Zuko is hot on her heels.

“Oh, I’ll do more than that!” He shoots back.

Eventually only Iroh is left. He sighs. He’s doing a lot of that these days.

 _It’s a consequence of keeping the company of younger people_. He calls a cook to come clean up the tea.

 _Teenagers,_ he thinks dismally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to get the hang of AO3 and I just realized its much easier to copy and paste in the rich text. Looks like I'm going back to fix the italics in the previous chapters.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated!


	4. Spirits Bless Nice Old People

At first, Zuko was perfectly content to let her rot in her cell, and to meet her demands, he would just leave the door unlocked. _As if the lock ever stopped you in the first place, but sure, whatever keeps you out of the way._ But Iroh, spirits bless nice old people, insisted she have her own room. _Have some compassion, Zuko. It was part of her request, after all._ Zuko turned rigid as soon as _compassion_ passed Iroh’s lips, but acquiesced to his uncle’s demands anyway.

In the end, Sora couldn’t say it was much different than her prison cell.

Four metal walls, a creaky bed, and a wash basin. At least the door locked from the inside this time.

She flops onto the bed and nearly has the wind knocked out of her. Was there _any_ give on this thing? As she twists this way and that on the cot, her thoughts turned to the prince and Iroh. The prince clearly didn’t trust her down to her pinky toe, but there was a caginess to him that Sora was sure concealed something more he wasn’t telling her. Iroh was even more curious. He spoke as if he knew Bumi personally. _Doesn’t often make his friendship with the last known Avatar public._ And while he never once broached the topic himself, Iroh was always keenly interested when she spoke of her father.

_Her father_. She wriggled on the mattress. There was always that one spring that dug into her back, no matter how she was positioned. When was the last time she saw _her father?_ Not on her last birthday. So was that eight months? Twelve? She turned onto her shoulder and just let the spring dig into her side. Not that it ever felt like he was truly gone. Every town, every city, wherever he travelled, they always seemed to know his name. Some farmer he helped with an overturned cart, a gambling debt he settled for a well-meaning but misguided youth, carrying a sick old woman to see her son again. Sora always thought it was exhausting, how he constantly found the energy to care for others. But it payed off, by the time he was gone he had the town swooning over the kind, handsome stranger that passed through. He was the sort to talk a lot and never say a thing about himself, so people always remembered when he put in a word for his daughter. _Ever see a girl with hazel eyes and dark hair, that’s my girl, Sora. She has a matching pair to this fang earing. But more importantly, a matching pair to this nose._ And then he would tap his nose and guffaw, and because her father just had that sort of laughter, everyone else would break in too. Or, that’s how she thinks it must always go, but that’s only what other people have told her.

Sora rubs the lobe of her ear. They took away all her stuff when they threw her into the prison cell. The earring came off with her sword and fans and knives. Her journal- her research- was as far as she knew, deemed uninteresting. The guards had flipped through a few pages, read what to them must have been gibberish, and proceeded it to dump it with the rest of her thing. Though it might not stay uninteresting for long, if the prince had anything to say about it. She hopes for her father’s sake that it stays untarnished. Not that he had much to say to her for over a year.

Sora sits up and rubs her head. Spirits. There’s a reason she tries not to think of her father. She decides its nothing a trip to the mess can’t fix, so she slides off the mattress and goes to find food. It would also be nice to get some of her stuff back, but she would never be allowed her weapons, and she would rather the prince didn’t learn about her journal. Maybe Iroh will help her. Or some other guard.

Lucky her, because Shou is also in the mess hall. Last she saw him, he was sent below deck after his dismal attempts to try to subdue her. If she wants to salvage a friendship, she really hopes the prince doesn’t follow up with a punishment, because while Iroh is fun for an old man, he is also _old_ , and Shou is probably the only one within ten years of her age on this ship. Except for the prince- Zuko. It felt weird to say his name, even if it was only in her head. She wonders if it will be just as awkward to say it out loud.

Keeping one eye on Shou, she follows her nose to the counter that separates the mess hall from the kitchen. She barely approaches it before a cook shoves a plate in her hands.

“Lunch?” He says. “Here.” He doesn’t wait for her answer and turns back to a large vat of mystery soup.

Sora is left with a very sorry plate of boiled vegetables topped with a mystery sauce. Sora is just happy it’s not rice again.

At any rate, she slides into the bench across from Shou with fresh slop from the kitchen. She props her head on her palm and smiles toothily.

He immediately sighs sharply, with a glare to match.

Uh oh.

“I’m just going to have to put up with your antics whether I like it or not, aren’t I?” He stabs a morsel of boiled carrot emphatically. “If it involves making an embarrassment of myself in front of anyone in charge, count me out.”

She winces. He’s been stewing on that one for sure. “Really, I’m sorry about that. Promise I’ll be better. You’re kinda the only one I can talk to.”

He prods at his meal and doesn’t meet her eyes. “Fine. What do you want to talk about.”

She sighs. “I’m serious, Shou. If you don’t want to talk to me I understand. I’ll just- “

Shou holds up a hand to stop her. And she does. It wasn’t mean, just- _I don’t really care either way so stop talking._

The tension releases from her shoulders that she didn’t even realize was there before.

At first, she pegged Shou as socially awkward, but maybe the truth was he didn’t really care enough about impressing anyone to feel embarrassed. And he was quiet simply because he didn’t feel the need to say anything. Sora can respect someone like that. And she does feel just a tiny bit bad that he was the collateral in Sora’s mostly-verbal-sometimes-physical conflict with Zuko. As a peace offering, she says, “so, you have any friends here? Or do you like sitting by yourself?”

He sends her a calculating look over his meal. “You’re not back to making fun of me, are you?”

“No!” She says exasperatedly. How can she get such a bad read on this boy? “I’m not. I swear.”

Something must have come across as earnest because his terseness fades and he takes another bite of his meal. “I’m the youngest person on this ship. There’s not a lot of friends to be had.”

“What about Prince Zuko?”

Shou blinks and tilts his head as if to say _are you shitting me?_ “You realize the largest amount of interaction between me and the Prince has happened in the last two weeks, right? And you know that’s mostly been due to my apparent dereliction of duty because of your shenanigans, right? And you know that’s mostly your fault, _right?”_

Sora blinks. Then, she can’t help it- a laugh burbles up from her chest and bursts out with no warning. Shou barely blanches in surprise. She always thought Shou was a bit of a doormat, but apparently he has some spunk. “Wow. Okay. I didn’t expect that.” She chuckles a bit more, then sobers. “I really am sorry about that, Shou. It was nothing personal.”

He shrugs. “That doesn’t really make me feel better, but I’m fine letting bygones be bygones. Just don’t do it again.”

She tilts her head in a wry grin. “Let’s start over. This time, on equal footing, not as guard and prisoner.”

He snorts. “You say that like the power dynamic was ever tipped in my favor.”

She extends her hand. “Equal footing, Shou. Friends.”

He stares at her hand. Huffs. And sighs. “Fine,” he says, clasping her palm. She doesn’t miss the twitch up at the corner of his mouth. “Friends.”

“Yes! So now that we’re _friends_ -“ she leans forward and steeples her fingers under her chin. “-and _my_ sort of antics are out of the question, then what do you get up to?

“We’re friends two seconds,” Shou says glumly, “and you’re already trying to get me in trouble.”

Sora decides it would be counterproductive to point out that Shou _admitted_ his antics would get them in trouble. “You _know_ trouble doesn’t bother me.”

He purses his lips. “As one _friend_ to another, Sora, you just got out of the prince’s cell. Maybe trouble should bother you.”

Ah yes. This is exactly the same Shou she dealt with as a prisoner. “And I’m asking _you,_ as one _friend_ to another, what your interests are,” she says drily. “That’s all.”

“That’s never _all_ with you.” But he taps his fork on the tray, and seems to be thinking of a real answer to her question. “I don’t know. I ran around the streets as a kid, I guess.”

_Lame!_ She doesn’t say. But with Shou, it was a start. “Where did you grow up?”

“Bianpao. Though I visited my aunt’s farm in the spring.”

Her eyes widen. “No way! My family used to visit every year for the Solstice Festivals. I told everyone that the fireworks there were better than anything you could see in the Capital, but no one ever believed.

A wistful look comes over Shou, and she is surprised he is capable of something that isn’t suspicious or grumpy. “You should see it in the summer. Every night we would run out in the streets setting off fireworks till dawn. If at least five houses didn’t catch fire every summer, it wasn’t a success.”

She blinks. “No. Nooo. You were one of those boys? The firecracker boys? Wait! Wait!” She shrieks, earning her fierce glares from further down the table. “ _Those_ are the antics you’re talking about?”

Shou hunches down, darting his eyes around the room. “Nooo…”

“Stop acting shifty and own up. I can’t believe it. _Arson_. For fun”

“No!” He says sharply.

“Your idea of fun is setting houses on fire. You said so yourself.”

“It’s _not!_ ” He yells. The entire hall turns to stare at him. He glares at her and she snickers.

“How come whenever I interact with you I end up drawing more attention to myself.”

“It’s called pissing people off, Shou. I happen to be an expert at it.”

“You don’t say. And for what? Wait don’t tell me. Because you’re _bored_.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when you speak so well for me.”

“You’re selfish.”

“I know. But I’m happy.” She props her chin on her fist. “Because you are far more interesting than I thought you were going to be. I thought they only sold fireworks during festivals, though. They sold them all year?”

Shou examines her and seems to come to the conclusion she is not teasing him. “Of course not. We made the fireworks ourselves. Well, I made most of them.” He pauses, caught up in the memory. “I guess I was good at it.”

Bewildered, she says, “you _make_ fireworks?

He waves his hand dismissively. “Used to. Before I joined the military.”

This boy. Is _impossible._ “Shou. Why didn’t you lead with that? That’s way more interesting than- I don’t even remember what it was because it was so banal. Do you realize that you are a much cooler person now?”

“What? Why would you say that?” Shou says, panicky. “I don’t try to be.”

“That’s why you’re cool.”

A normal person would be flattered, but because its Shou he just looks grim. “I guess so.”

Sora suppresses the urge to roll her eyes and leans forward on the table, abandoning all thoughts of consuming her fire nation apportioned vegetable mush. “Okay. Well now you have to tell me all about how you make them. Where do you get the materials? I heard you use a special powder. How do you make it? What paper do you use? How do you make those different colors? And just so you know, you’re going to have to tell me all this again later so I can write it in my journal.”

Shou somehow looks overwhelmed and cautious all at once, but she recognizes that spark of excitement in him, like when her father is talking about his latest obsession. It looks like he’s about to open his mouth to answer her, when it unexpectedly clamps shut. Sora doesn’t even realize he was sitting up straight until he’s drawing back into himself, hunching over and going back to prodding at his meal.

What did she do to offend him this time? “Shou,” she mutters, tapping her finger impatiently on the table. “Do I have to tell you again? I’m not making fun of you, or bringing unnecessary attention–”

“Well, tell that to _him_ ,” Shou hisses.

She realizes that Shou isn’t the only one who has clammed up. The whole hall has gone silent. She turns to look behind her, and jumps when she sees the prince framing the entrance of the hall, searing a venomous gaze into her back.

“Spirits, how long has he been standing there?”

Shou doesn’t answer her. The prince strides towards her, ramrod straight, like he’s walking with a stick up his ass. Sora, just to get on his nerves, leans back on the table and picks at her gums with her fingernail. Simultaneously, it also gives the impression she is baring her teeth. This makes the prince’s mouth take on the likeness of sucking a sour lemon. He stops in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. The room is dead silent, all of the soldiers in the hall either peering over their soldiers or blatantly ogling in their direction.

Zuko, ever the eloquent conversationalist, opens his mouth, closes it again, and then whips around to address their audience.

“Can I _help_ you all with anything?” He snarls.

The rest of the room is suddenly extremely interested in their food.

When he turns back around, his nostrils are flared and he has an unpleasant sneer set in his face. “We need to talk.”

“Oh _do_ we?” She snaps. Part of her is annoyed that he is so demanding, but another part is shaken she didn’t notice him in the room sooner. She should have heard him or smelled him (it’s not as creepy as it sounds!) the sneaky bastard. “Are you a creep? Just come up and _talk_ if-“

He grabs her mouth to muffle the rest of her sentence. “For once in your life be _silent,_ peasant. Perhaps we should continue this on the upper deck where there is less of an–” The prince’s eyes go wide as saucers as he lets out a very high-pitched shriek and yanks his hand away from her mouth. He then proceeds to furiously scrub his hand down the side of his tunic. “Did you just _lick_ me?”

At least three different people spit out their drink. Shou goes into a coughing fit that has him doubled over, wheezing under the table.

Sora is so pleased with this turn of events that she lets the prince grab her by the collar and drag her out of the mess hall. As she is forcefully evicted, she sends Shou a wink, who looks like someone just told him his favorite pet died.

The prince pulls her halfway across the ship before she is done with being dragged by the collar. “ALRIGHT! Let go already!” She yells and slaps childishly at the hand gripping her shirt. Zuko lets go and stumbles back a few steps.

As she straightens her shirt, Zuko gathers himself. The tips of his ears are bright red, and he’s breathing hard, even though there was nothing he did that could’ve made him out of breath. He’s rubbing his hands against his pants, even the one she didn’t lick (spirits, Sora, what have you done). His eyes dart around the corridor, but when they catch her gaze, he immediately stiffens. He slips back into that cold, cruel, demeanor; eyes narrowing, hands clasped behind his back. Sora can’t help but feel slightly disappointed, like there was something she was catching onto that slipped away.

“Don’t call me a _creep_.”

She’s reeling. “ _That’s_ what this is about?”

“NO!” He realizes that was a bit too loud, and pinches his nose. “No. Can we talk on the upper deck?”

“ _Talk?_ Talk about _what?_ All you’ve done is interrupted my lunch, grabbed my face and demand we _talk_. Couldn’t it have _waited?_ I’m on the main deck half of the day anyway with your uncle!”

Now he is absolutely red in the face. “Look, I’m _sor–”_ Both of them stop when they realize what he’s about to say.

“Go ahead,” she goads. “ _Say it_.”

“I–” He gulps, swallows. “I’m a prince! I don’t need to apologize for anything!”

She throws her hands into the air. “And here I thought we were making progress!”

“Progress. _Progress?_ What sort of _progress_ do you think I’m working on with you?”

She huffs. “You know what? _I’m_ going to the main deck. Maybe you can calm down and we can _talk_ when you’re ready.” And before he can get in the last word, she turns and sprints up the hatch to the main deck.

She’s already gone before Zuko can pick his jaw off the floor and formulate an answer. “That’s not- you- DON’T TREAT ME LIKE SOME TODDLER!”

Her head pokes back below deck, hanging upside down. “You know what, Zuko? All the fucks I give couldn’t fit in a god-damn PEANUT SHELL!”

“Oh, creative _and_ obscene! What’s new?”

“Please! Obscene?” She laughed. The fact that she was upside down made it all the more maniacal. “Haven’t you brushed your hair this morning? Add this to your repertoire if you want obscene!”

The two gestures she held up were just that.

The prince musters up a fiery blast in response.

Sora ducks out of the way, meaning she disappears above deck,

leaving the prince opening and closing his jaw in stupefied silence.

Technically he got in the last word (or gesture), right? So technically, he _won_ this argument, right?

Zuko didn’t much like the answer to that question.

And what was wrong with his hair?

* * *

Iroh is already on the main deck, sitting at the table playing his solitary game of Rennai, puzzling where to place the air tile. Sora stomps over and collapses into the chair across from him. Iroh doesn’t even look up from his game. _Of course, he’s very accustomed to bad tempers_ , Sora thinks bitterly.

“Ah, Sora, sit down,” he says, even though she’s already in the chair. “Zuko just went to bring you here.”

She snorts. “How considerate of him to bring a chair for me to sit in.” She gestures at the sole set of chairs positioned at the table.

“My nephew can fail to think ahead at times.”

“Your nephew,” she says more embittered than she means to, “is a real piece of work.”

Iroh sighs and puts down his tile. He folds his hand in his sleeves. She wonders how Iroh is going to defend Zuko this time. But all he says is, “and don’t I know it. Sometimes he lacks foresight into these things.”

“You call it lack of foresight. I call it lack of compassion.”

Iroh just closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No. I won’t make excuses, because it’s not easy to get to know him. And he makes sure of that. But.”

Sora is not one easily at a loss for words. She always has something at the tip of her tongue. Most of the time, it’s something stupid, often insulting, and usually both. When Iroh opens his eyes, he looks at her with something very raw and tender.

Sora has nothing to say.

“But– I know my nephew. More than he knows himself. And he is compassionate.” That mask has moved back into place, and now Iroh is daring her to question him, to challenge him.

Sora is not sure she rises to it when she says, “even though he doesn’t want to be.”

Iroh considers this, and then leans back in his seat. Sora secretly breathes a sigh of relief.

“Sora. I know this is a lot to ask. But if you have it in you,” Iroh runs his hands over the Rennai tiles, and picks up the air tile again. He smiles, and places it on the board. “Please be patient with Zuko. Even if he doesn’t deserve it.”

Sora doesn’t know what to make of this. The old man talks as if the prince has some secret soft side to him. But the prince isn’t even nice to his own uncle, the uncle that claims he knows Zuko like a son, so Sora isn’t even sure she _wants_ to know Zuko. Giving him a second or a third or a however-many-chance seems like exactly something her father would do, and Sora just isn’t capable of that.

“Let’s play Pai-Sho,” Sora says. It’s a non-answer, but she doesn’t want to break it to the old man that she has no desire to be bullied by Zuko as a friend instead of an enemy. “I’m beating you this time old man.”

Iroh laughs. Any indication they just had, a serious conversation about the moody and temperamental prince is wiped from the air. He stands up, and gestures for her to follow him to the bridge. “Come. I’ll introduce you to some of the other crew mates. You’ll do better when you work together.”

* * *

In the end, Zuko never actually came up to ‘talk.’ Iroh introduced her to Tao, Lei, and Min, who regularly teamed against Iroh in Pai Sho. They had never actually beaten him before, and still didn’t win with her help, but they insisted it was still the closest they had ever gotten. They wouldn’t let her go until she promised to play with them again, and she did so before retreating back to her room.

She had thought after the last twenty-four hours she would be exhausted, and fall asleep the moment she hit the cot. But there something oddly stimulating about the way it dug into her back that kept her at the brink of consciousness. And on top of that, she could never quite get her thoughts settled. She flipped on to one shoulder. Why did Iroh need someone to give Zuko a chance? Did Zuko even _want_ someone to give him a chance? She twisted to the other side. And why _her_? Sora wasn’t exactly the paragon of forgiveness. Even Shou admitted she was selfish. She turned onto her back. She tugged the sheets off the thin mattress. Why was it so hot in here? This is the sort of thing her father would have done. He would have seen how misguided the prince was. Would have said that Zuko lashed out because of some deep insecurity or some hogshit like that. Bitter because he was socially inept. Sora snorted and curled up on her side again. Why was she even worrying about this? What did she care? She wanted to stay very much out of the way unless it benefited her. But the thoughts continue to wriggle in her mind. Iroh’s face, earnest and forthright. Why did it bother her? Dragon of the West, sensitive and yielding, she thought. Gentle. Tender. But also- but also-

Heartbroken. She couldn’t bear it.

She groaned and buried her face in the mattress. There was a reason she didn’t think about these sort of things.

* * *

In the end, Zuko never actually came up to ‘talk’ with Sora.

His original plan was to wring out more information about the Avatar to avoid another Pai Sho game with his uncle, and to maybe get an argument in to let off some steam. He would never call it _enjoyable_ to talk with her, but it was… cathartic. Yes. That was the word.

He intended to march right into the hall where the soldiers gathered to eat and tell her forcefully and emphatically that she would come with him and give him straight answers. But when he stepped inside and saw her energetically talking with another soldier– and not just _any_ soldier, but the guard that was assigned to her prison cell– he chickened out. The crown prince of the Fire Nation, firebender and master in the martial arts, _chickened out_. And then people started staring, and he started panicking, and she licked him–

By Sozin, she _licked_ him. Perhaps it wasn’t the most princely thing to cover someone’s mouth with one’s hand, but like Zuko said, he was panicking.

A small, tiny part of him envied her, because she wasn’t scrutinized for every action she took, every word she spoke. She somehow managed to act like she was in the center of attention and invisible at the same time.

Which was another thing. He just didn’t know how to act around her. She called him on his temper and stalked away, leaving him at a serious disadvantage. He could go up and join her, which would really make him seem like the toddler with a tantrum she thought he was, or he could abandon the notion completely and go to sulk in his room. Either way, he would look stupid, and she won. Damn her. _Damn her._

In the end, Zuko went with the less painful option. If he couldn’t see her, he could pretend Sora didn’t exist, and also pretend it didn’t make him an utter coward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rennai is the game Iroh was playing in the first episode(?) that didn't have a name. It literally means patience. Aren't I creative.
> 
> Idk how this chapter turned out but uhhh whatever I'll just post it.  
> Also, I discovered the line break. Yay!
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated! I love them and they keep me writing!


	5. Snooping

Somehow, Sora doesn’t see Zuko for another day, and half a day after that. Their disagreement undoubtedly rankled his pride, but she doesn’t see how this one was different than any other bouts they’ve had. Even for a prince, the ship is by no means large enough to inconspicuously put distance between two people. Sora gives Zuko another half a day before she can tease him about avoiding her.

But knowing Zuko, he ruins this too by approaching her during a Pai Sho game with Shou. Sora insisted she needed practice if she was going to ever come close to beating Iroh, even though Shou was about as good at the game as he was at talking, which is to say that he wasn’t _bad,_ just slow and indecisive. In fact, this particular game is going poorly for Sora; Shou is taking longer than usual on his turns, which makes her more compulsive and antsy, which leads to a string of poorly thought out decisions that now has her playing on the defense. It’s during one of Shou’s strung out turns that the prince materializes behind her like he’s an incorporeal being that fades into existence instead of a normal person that just _walks_ places.

It’s a little disquieting how much the prince catches her off guard. Sora doesn’t have good hearing as much as she is in tune with the air currents in the room, and the prince creates very little disturbances. When she’s distracted, like during an agonizingly long game of Pai Sho, he can sneak up on her. It leaves her with a big more than a tinge of annoyance.

Shou, of course, has no such extra sensory abilities, and is so surprised by the prince’s sudden appearance that he stands up too quickly and nearly knocks the Pai Sho board over. Sora takes this opportunity to steal one of his tiles. “P-Prince Zuko!” he sputters eloquently.

Now that Zuko has no doubt sent Shou into the throes of a nervous breakdown that will outlast the prince’s presence, and by proxy ruin her game, she’s a bit peeved and so leans back in her chair and purrs, “I’ve missed your lovely face, my prince. Your ponytail is long and lustrous as I last remembered.”

“Don’t call me that” he says like someone might tell their deer dog _drop that thing in your mouth_. He completely ignores the last part. “We’re landing for supplies. You know where you need to be.”

“I will guard this ship from the main deck against any who seek to commandeer it for themselves,” she says gravely.

“No.”

“I will be eating my share of fried dumplings in the kitchen?”

“No.”

“I will be composing the next great Epic of our generation from the relative freedom of the room you so graciously provide-“

“No! We agreed you would be in your cell, so you go in your cell!”

She snorts. “Only an idiot would agree to something like that.”

“That- you-“

“You know what they say. A happy prisoner makes a happy ship.”

“They don’t say that!”

Sora examines her nails. “Well they should.”

Zuko sucks in one of his _she is testing me but I will not let her win_ breaths. Sora should know, she has them named and catalogued by now. This particular one, combined with the steely look in his eye, means that she is not going to win this fight. But that doesn’t mean she’s going down easy, either, so instead of bothering with a response, she plays a white lily tile. “Mm. Check.”

Shou frowns. “It’s not even your turn!”

Sora snorts. “You snooze, you lose.”

“Are you simple?” The prince snaps. “Don’t ignore me when I’m talking to you!”

“I’m _not_!” Sora shoots back. And then, under her breath, “but I certainly want to be simple when _you’re_ talking.”

The prince’s lips curl back from his teeth. “You have fifteen minutes, Sora. Sozin help you if you’re not in a cell by then.”

Sora flaps her hand nonchalantly. “Great. Just enough time for Shou to finish his turn.”

“Hey!”

The prince points a finger at her as he prepares to let loose some other threat. Sora grabs for it and he swipes it away, which leaves him leaning kind of awkwardly forward in a menacing sort of way. “I’m _warning_ you,” he says.

Sora rolls her eyes. “Thank you, I feel thoroughly warned.” Sora mouths to Shou, _can you believe this guy?_

“I _saw_ that,” says Zuko, though his ire is no longer directed toward Sora, and he is instead glaring at the Pai Sho board as if he had some personal vendetta against it. Sora and Shou watch him in silence as he examines how the tiles are placed. It’s not often that the prince doesn’t have a sneer or another insult on the tip of his tongue, so she waits him out. “Here,” he finally says, and leans over to point a spot on the board. His hand moves to two more places. “Here, and here. She’s about to capture your tiles.” Both Sora and Shou’s mouths simultaneously drop open. “Your best bet is to sacrifice this one, and play the fire weed tile Sora swiped from the board to capture her white jade. If you play it right, you can get her white lotus too.” He straightens, and as if he hadn’t just imparted a advice to Sora’s opponent, he stalks out of the room. “And stop cheating, Sora!”

“Ha- what- Hey!” Sora turns in her chair to watch Zuko disappear out the doorway. “You can’t just _leave_ after that!”

Shou is counting his pieces, brow furrowed. “Hey, my fire weed tile _is_ gone!”

She produces the said tile from her pocket and flicks it at his forehead. “Don’t take your eyes off the board, you ninny.”

“Don’t cheat!”

“Don’t take Pai Sho advice from princes! He’s probably sabotaging you.”

“Oh, as if,” Shou says, leaning over the board with newfound excitement gleaming in his eye. “He hates you. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I’m gonna take _extra_ long on this turn now.”

Sora groans and throws her hand dramatically over her eyes. “Oh, stab me and throw me in the dungeon of a thickheaded fire nation prince.”

Shou raises his brows. “Speaking of, you should probably…”

Sora groans again. “I know, I know.” She stands up and stretches her hands over her head. “Gah. Buy me something pretty from town, Shou.”

He doesn’t even look up from the board. “As if. I don’t have any money.”

“Well do _something_ fun, anyway. When are you going to be back?”

“Er… I have to help load supplies, but then I guess I’ll wander around for a bit. Four hours?”

“Let me rephrase that. When is the _prince_ going to be back?”

Shou rolls his eyes. “At most three, at least two hours.”

Sora ponders that. Well, it _should_ be enough time. She’ll have to be quick.

“Don’t worry, Sora,” Shou continues. “He doesn’t like to linger. I have faith you’ll make it out of your cell with your sanity intact. Just take a nap or something.”

She whistles. “Wow. When did you get snarky?”

“Always was, Sora,” he says breezily. “You just got more persistent. You got a problem with that?”

Sora grins. “No, Shou. Not at all.”

“Good,” he says, dropping a fire weed on the board. “Because I’ve got you in check.”

“Wha- _Damnit_ Shou _!_ ”

* * *

Sora doesn’t think they’re going to lock the cell at all until a harried soldier comes by at the last second with a set of keys, a tinge annoyed for this extra task before he can get off this spirits forsaken ship, or so his not-so-quiet grumbling tells her. He doesn’t appreciate Sora’s commiserative comment of “friggin jail cells, right?” and instead opts to glare at her through the cell’s peep hole before hurrying away.

It would have been a real shame if they did forget to lock the cells anyway, because then all of Sora’s preparations would have gone to waste. She listens to the echoes of the soldier’s boots fade and stuffs her hand under the mattress (if a pile of straw wrapped in fabric can be called that) and pulls out her crude set of lock picks. The ship is almost annoyingly bare, and the best she could do is a pair of tin chopsticks stolen from the mess hall, filed down on the edge of her door frame. It took an annoyingly long time to make them, simply because the door frame was the best surface in her room and the friction was accompanied by just enough noise to cause suspicion. So the creation of this tool was accompanied by a full rendition of all her favorite fire nation songs. More than once she has heard other soldiers unconsciously sing under their breath, and Zuko has banned “Firecracker Soup Ditty” after he caught Iroh humming the chorus.

She probably wouldn’t have the song stuck in half the crew’s head if she wasn’t watched at every waking moment. Fairly early on, she caught on to a crew member reporting to Zuko every time she stepped out of her room. Sora spent the rest of the afternoon ducking in and out of her room every five minutes. Suffice to say Zuko was pissed off more than usual that day, and from then on it was only a guard posted at the main intersections of the below decks.

Even then, she nearly got caught stashing the lock picks in the cells, by General Iroh no less. Sora got the distinct impression he was waiting for her, but he didn’t say anything, just invited her up for a game of Pai Sho. And a good thing too, because it would have looked a great deal more suspicious than it already did if she walked by alone past the guard that had suddenly appeared around the corner. Curse herself for being so careless.

Now came the most difficult part of this plan. Sora tied string around the tension wrench and the pick, and lowered them through the peephole. It’s a lot easier to manipulate things when they are already near the lock without Sora having to feel out the air and pick them up. Still holding the string, she presses her ear against the door about where the lock should be, and closes her eyes to concentrate. Air doesn’t like to stay in one place, but the trick is to find the flow- to have the air twist around a bit of metal instead of gripping it. Sora has had a lot of practice at this particular thing, but it still takes five minutes until she’s sure she has the pick in the lock, and another ten for her to feel out the tumblers and finally unlock it. She _can_ be patient when she wants.

When the door finally creaks open, she breathes out a sigh and wipes the sweat from her forehead. This is the most she’s used her airbending since she came on this ship, and she’s wondering if the lack of upkeep is taking a toll. She’s hesitant to say she’s out of practice, but she’s definitely not getting any better. Unlike Zuko, who’s up at the crack of dawn, training relentlessly for spirits-know-what.

Sora pushes the door open a bit more and peeks out into the hallway. It’s as she expected: the ship is practically empty. Perfect for a bit of snooping.

She makes her way through the ship corridors, opening doors she never would have dared previously. Any locked entries were quick work with her hands, though most of them were just storage. She spends a bit more time in the weaponry, taking a set of shurikens that wouldn’t be missed, but decides to forego anything as conspicuous as a knife or sword. She also finds the barracks, which teetered between disorderly and neat depending on the bunk. She searches for the most boring looking bunk assuming it would be Shou’s but this is difficult since there is quite a few old men on the ship with the same dull imaginations. Eventually she hit gold- a diary under a pillow, titled “Shou’s Journal.” Sora read a couple of entries about herself, but it was nothing that Shou already made obvious. There were a few passages that detailed the prince’s training exercise, and then a very bad sketch complete with abs. Sora had to stuff her face into the pillow to keep her laughter silent. She was tempted to leave a message but decided against it, because she knew Shou would tattle on her in a heartbeat. She loved that kid.

Among other noteworthy things in the barracks were a set painted of cards of promiscuously dressed women, a notebook detailing strategies to beat Iroh in Pai Sho, and, best of all, a tallied list titled “Sora vs. Prince” taped to the wall. Sora was up five on the prince. She added two more to her side.

The barracks were a great deal of fun, but they weren’t what she was looking for. In fact, Sora is starting to worry what she wants wasn’t here at all- what if they dumped all of her stuff into the ocean the minute she was thrown in her cell? She avoids two soldiers that were camped out at the stairway leading up to the main deck, and nearly bumps into another before hastily retreating around the corner. The problem is that all of the hallways and doors looked the same. She can never tell if something is important or not. It would be better to have a map, but she had yet to find one.

Sora is about to give up and go back to her cell when she stumblees upon her most interesting find yet. It was up a few flights of stairs, right under the main tower. The door isn’t locked, surprisingly, maybe everyone just _knew_ they weren’t supposed to come into this room. It’s a lot cozier than any other place on the ship, at least as cozy as a room with metal walls and floors can be. It even has a thin strip of window- Sora can see out to the ocean from here, a couple floors above the top deck. Fire nation banners decorate the walls, which might not even be a nationalistic show of Fire Nation pride, excessive pride is just normal in the Fire Nation. On the opposite wall, an ornate looking dresser is ruined by drips of wax from candles burned down to the stub- some sort of firebending training exercise?

Sora nearly laughs out loud when she sees the mounted broadswords. It reminds her of those stuffy nobles that like to decorate with weaponry just to show sympathetic militarism even though the most dangerous thing they had ever touched were their porcelain spoons.

She slides out one of the swords from the mount, weighing it in her hand, testing a few swings. The balance isn’t bad, not in the least. She rubs the edge along her sleeve. It’s sharp. And oiled often. Against her better judgement, Sora is impressed. Who knew Zuko was a sword buff? She couldn’t see him using it, since he was a firebender and you are generally thought a weak bender if you used weapons, at least in the Firenation. She carefully slides the sword back in its holder, oddly pleased that Zuko had _some_ hobbies besides being obsessed with the Avatar.

Sora does have some luck after all, because she finds exactly what she’s looking for in the candle dresser: Her steel fans (clean and oiled, she notices. Zuko’s doing?), her fang earing, and her journal, stuffed with papers that _definitely_ weren’t there before. Zuko has been doing some snooping on his own time, it seemed. She pages through the book, reading the notes that Zuko has been presumably taking about her code. The journal isn’t entirely coded, just the passages that she and her father wanted to keep from prying eyes: conclusions about the Avatar, phrases that would get her into the back rooms of certain establishments, family secrets. The like.

Evidently this has frustrated Zuko, by the amount of question marks and scribbling he has in his notes, one for nearly every coded passage in the journal. Sora desperately just wants to take the journal with her, but Zuko would know that it had been her. But this gives her enough leverage as it is, and with a tight-ass like Zuko, she needs every bit she can get. 

There’s one thing in the drawer that’s _not_ hers: a water tribe proposal necklace. What on the badgers’ green earth is Zuko with something like this?

...could he be smitten on some water tribe girl?

Sora tries to imagine it, but it just doesn’t fit in with her picture of Zuko. It does raise quite a few questions, though. Maybe she’ll casually bring it up with Iroh.

Sora takes care to place all the things back in the drawer so it looks untampered. She puts down the necklace for her own piece of jewelry, her fang earring, to roll between her fingers. She has the urge to try it on for a moment, but that’s just silly so she drops it in the drawer and shoves it closed a bit harder than is necessary.

Sora checks the room one more time to ensure there is no evidence of her being there, and then creeps quietly out of the room and down the stairs. There is no way the Prince will just give her the journal, so she has to make some sort of trade, or appeal to his pride or something. Preferably the latter, the less she gives up the better, but she has a feeling that the prince won’t feel compelled to prove himself to a prisoner…

… but perhaps a fellow _firebender_ might be a more worthy opponent.

Sora is so caught up in her thoughts she almost misses the sounds of boots stomping up the gangplank. She curses, and flies to the window- that’s the prince, coming back with quite a few soldiers. “Shit,” she mutters. “Shit, _shit._ ” She flies down the stairwell as quickly and quietly as possible, before stopping to duck out of sight where a group of soldiers are passing. What the hell, Shou? He told her two hours at _least_ ; it couldn’t have been more than one.

She manages to sneak her way down to the cells, there aren’t _that_ many soldiers yet, and she’s in the home stretch when she turns a corner and leaps back to press herself against the wall.

The soldier that came to lock her up is walking down the corridor to her cell- the one that she’s _supposed to be in._ There’s no way to pass him, and definitely no way without him seeing her.

She’s screwed. The prince will never let her see the light of day again.

“C’mon Sora, _think,_ ” she hisses to herself. She glances worriedly at the guard and then turns the corner, muffling her footsteps. They pass door after identical door, heart thudding faster each one they pass to her cell. It’s a wonder that he knows which cell it is at all, because they look-

Well they all look exactly the same.

Sora really hopes that this soldier gives less a shit about his job than she thinks he does, because she’s about to pull one out from under him.

Ducking quickly into the nearest cell before he sees her, she winces at the click as the door is pulled shut. The soldier doesn’t seem to notice, instead he stops at the one where she is supposed to be, and unlocks it.

“The prince said they’re back early,” he says gruffly, “and reminds you to not get into much trouble-“ he cuts off when he opens the door and realizes there’s no one in the cell.

Sora hears the muttered “fuuuuuu-“ under his breath. “Shit. He’s gonna kill me. _He’s gonna kill me._ ”

Amongst the soldier’s panic is perfect moment to bang on the door to get his attention. “Oi.” She calls. “You going stand there acting dramatic or are you going to let me out?”

The soldier freezes, and Sora thinks for a moment she hasn’t fooled him and he’s going to go running to the prince, but then he sighs in relief and hurries to her door. He’s so relieved to see her locked up, that he doesn’t seem to question his memory.

“You can tell me next time instead of just watching me like an idiot,” he says crossly. Sora doesn’t correct his assumption, and just smiles, hooking her thumbs on her the belted fabric at her waist as the door swings open.

“Why _thank_ you sir,” she says cheekily. She saunters past him with her usual swagger, putting on a good show until the soldier is out of sight, and then she collapses against wall.

Fuckin spirits- that was _way_ to close a call for comfort, and sloppy on Sora’s part. She should have been listening closer. But what had gotten the soldiers back so early?

“Is confinement really that exhausting?”

Sora swears she jumps two feet in the air. “ _Fuck_ ing turtle-monkeys Zuko, how do you always sneak up on me?”

The prince raises his one (good) brow and crosses his arms.

She shifts her weight onto her other foot. Ugh, stop acting _guilty_ Sora. “It’s less tiring and more… _nerve wracking_. I’m sure you’ve realized by now I don’t like confined spaces,” she blabs. Spirits, did that scare bend her so out of shape that she’s baring her heart to the prince? What is wrong with her?

“Oh,” he says.

“Oh? That’s it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he snaps. “If you’re expecting sympathy you have the wrong person.”

Sora tilts her head down and glares at him through lowered eyes. “Trust me, I wasn’t. We all know you’re incapable of such.”

Zuko crosses his arms over his chest. “Maybe just with _you._ ”

“ _Riiight,”_ she says drily. “I think the only person you care about is your uncle. And even then, I have my doubts.”

Zuko moves suddenly- if Sora didn’t know any better, she would say it was a flinch. “I care about everyone in my crew. As prince of the Fire Nation, it’s my duty to care for _all_ my subjects.”

“Only _you_ could make caring seem like a chore.”

“Well that isn’t what matters!” He snaps. Ah, _there’s_ the Fire Nation Prince brand of defensiveness. “What matters is proving myself by capturing the Avatar, and regaining my honor!”

“Being honorable doesn’t make you a good prince!”

“Wha- yes it _does,_ ” he says a bit incredulously, as if Sora is that stupid. “It’s arguably the most important thing! Who would listen to a banished prince?”

“No one,” Sora snaps. “They listen to your uncle.”

This time, Zuko really does flinch. Sora almost feels sorry for saying it at all, before remembering that she shouldn’t care.

Any hurt from her words flees in a heartbeat. Sora doesn’t even realize Zuko’s expression was _passionate_ until he steels it into the callously cruel sneer. She also realizes she has a preference, which she shouldn’t have either, what is wrong with her?

“As if someone like _you_ would understand.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean-“

Zuko doesn’t answer; his attention is drawn away to behind her, and Sora swivels, bothered that he just cut off without elaborating. A couple of soldiers are standing nervously halfway down the hall, not keen to get in the middle of whatever _that_ was.

“What are you two staring at? You should be readying the ship to leave port, not blocking up the hallways!”

Sora doesn’t point out that _they_ are technically the road block. The soldiers exchange a glance.

“Sir, General Iroh hasn’t come back.”

“ _What?_ ” The prince’s temper flares. “Well why _not_?” He says, stomping away from Sora. Okay, so conversation _over_.

A pity the general’s not here, because she was a hoping for a game. Shou will have to do. She defects from the one sided yelling match in favor of finding him, and wringing out why everyone is back early without giving herself away. It’s too bad the prince has put her in such a mood, because she would have teased Shou about how attractive the prince is when’s he’s sparring. Maybe it’s better she doesn’t anyway, because that seems like a dangerous topic.

Looking back at the prince railing on the two guards in the hallway, Sora can’t fathom why that is, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwa ha ha... I'm back. If you’ve been waiting here’s a fairly long update. School caught up with me and I couldn't do much writing, but now that I have a two week break I have plans for this story. Stick with me, because we're actually getting involved with the plot from the Avatar instead of shenanigans on the ship.  
> Be expecting some art for this fic. I’ve been drawing Sora in my free time ;)...
> 
> Also, if you're interested I have a couple chapters in a fullmetal alchemist/breath of the wild crossover. I will still mainly be focusing on this fic tho.
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!
> 
> Edit: omg I noticed like, an hour after I posted this, that I completely forgot about the water tribe necklace. I wrote it in, so hopefully that part doesn’t look too awkward


	6. So You’re Going to be a Royal Dickwad

The SS _Pencarian_ had seen better years, but it was the hard work and devotion of her crew that kept her in peak performance, capable of keeping pace with some of the most modern ships the Fire Nation boasted in its arsenal. When it was all said and done, the crew could get her up and running within the hour. The prince commanded it to be so upon boarding the ship the afternoon they first docked, after the disappointing trip to the nearby town. The small village had claimed to be ravaged by spirits, and had no supplies to spare for them. With no point in lingering (even the bar wasn’t selling alcohol) the soldiers traipsed back to the ship. The General had wandered off into the woods claiming he needed a relaxing bath, and the prince returned from checking on him by proclaiming the engines were to be up and running, and if the General Iroh wasn’t back within the half hour, let it be so. They would be leaving without him.

This was, of course, six hours ago.

Sora had been woken from her nap. She was trying to catch up on sleep while the ship wasn’t running full steam, because she was a light sleeper even without three-thousand components of a steam engine pumping and hissing and vibrating and generally making sleep on the ship an uncomfortable experience. Though this time, she had actually dozed through the engine starting up, and was woken up due to an entirely different cause.

At first she thought she might be in trouble- she’d come around because of an argument in the hallway, only to realize the altercation was happening right outside her door. The voices didn’t sound angry, or displeased, they just sounded worried (which didn’t necessarily mean Sora _wasn’t_ in trouble, but at least she wasn’t about to be mobbed first thing). They weren’t whispering, per say, but they weren’t talking very loud either. She couldn’t even try to eavesdrop- the walls were just thick enough to muffle what they were saying, and she couldn’t airbend the sound through the metal walls of the ship.

Sora severs the suspense and slams open the door to her room, and cuts off about five of the crew’s soldiers mid-conversation, Shou among them. She also thinks she recognizes Tao, Lei, and Min from Pai Sho games with Iroh, and one more who often hangs around while they’re playing, but she doesn’t know the name of. When it becomes clear they’re not about to jump and detain her, she leans against the door frame with her arms crossed, raising her brows expectantly. “Well? Can I help you gentlemen with anything?”

They all look at each other. Sora is still a bit groggy from her nap, so she spaces out as they goggle at each other, whispering and clearing their throats, figuring out what to say. Eventually two of them start elbowing Shou, who squeaks “why _me_?” but eventually steps forward.

“You have to calm the prince down.”

Sora hums, and leans her head against the doorway, closing her eyes.

A few moments pass and Shou coughs. “Er- Sora?”

“Just a moment Shou, I’m having the strangest dream. I heard that if you realize you’re dreaming, you can try to change it just with your mind, but I don’t think it’s working.”

“Sora,” Shou says, a touch irritated. “You’re not dreaming.”

Sora’s eyes snap open. “Then _why_ are you asking me, of all people, to- and I heard this correctly? To _calm_ the prince down? I can’t be the only one who sees what’s wrong with this picture, right?” She looks to the other soldiers for confirmation, who are all in various stages of grimacing or biting their lips. She can’t tell if they’re cringing or hiding their amusement.

“Look,” Lei cuts in. “You’re the only one he listens to right now. At least talk some sense into him!”

“What about General Iroh?” Sora reasons. “If anyone, _he’s_ the calming one.”

This statement thrills another bout of unease among the soldiers. “We know.” Tao answers her in a foreboding tone. “That’s the _problem_.”

Sora thought the soldiers were being a tad dramatic at first, but realizes this is not the case when she mounts the stairs to the top deck to see the positively fantastic mood the prince is in.

What is probably anxious pacing in Zuko’s mind is a marching stomp back and forth across the upper deck. Sora actually heard him below deck, but just thought something was knocked loose in the engine. Shou and the other soldiers gather on the staircase, like they’re in a trench shielding from enemy fire. Sora is the brave, suicidal soul that abandons cover, planting her feet, placing her hands on her hips. Battle stance.

“Oi!” Sora calls out. The prince doesn’t even pause. “Have you gotten fat? Your steps are a bit more heavy-weight than usual.”

Shou’s face palm is so audible that it echoes. “I _told_ you guys. I told you this was a bad idea.” Someone shushes him.

The prince keeps pacing, but his face is a bit more pinched than before.

“Hey!” Sora advances on him. “I’m _talking_ to you.”

The prince rounds on her abruptly. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch. “And I’m,” he says pointedly, “ _ignoring_ you.” He stalks to the side of the ship and grips the railing, staring to the land as if Iroh will just materialize out of the woods.

Sora considers how she will handle this. Her usual approach is to just get under his skin, and with that the journey is the destination. But now she needs to deescalate the situation, and Sora’s not even entirely sure what the _situation_ is. The first step would be elucidating exactly what that is, she guesses, which could be attained through sympathy or through, well, her _usual_ approach.

Let’s see. In this situation, her dad would probably…

She walks up to Zuko and stretches out her hand. Where does she place it? His shoulder pads are awfully spiky. On his back? His forearm? Sora settles her hand in the crook between his shoulder and his pauldron, but because it’s so oddly shaped she’s touching his neck, and now that she realizes how weird that it is she tries to save the gesture by rubbing it back and forth on his shoulder so it doesn’t look like she’s just moving away from his neck. “Heyyyy. Hey, buddy.”

Zuko doesn’t look pissed anymore, just awfully uncomfortable. Which _might_ be an improvement. “Did you eat something funny? You know, just because one of the crew members say a berry isn’t poisonous, doesn’t mean you should eat it.”

Sora exhales and drops her hand. “Okay, so you’re going to be a royal dickwad. Plan B it is.”

“That was a plan? As in, you thought it out and everything?” Zuko looks almost sorry. “And the purpose of this failed scheme was…?”

“To figure out why you’re throwing a hissy fit.”

The prince turns back to the woods, a grim set in his mouth. “The longer we wait, the farther the Avatar gets away from us.”

Sora throws her hands in the air. “Okay, just tell me like that. Don’t make it too easy or anything.” She leans up against the railing, so they’re facing opposite directions. “So, to recap. We are worried that the Avatar is getting away, and _not_ that your uncle is missing.”

“That’s General Iroh to _you_. And my uncle can take care of himself.”

Sora scoffs. Figures. The prince never seemed like the affectionate type, but it’s still amazing that he’s willing to forsake the only person that seems to genuinely care for him. Another man who thought family was just collateral. As collateral herself, it was surreal to see it from the other side of things. “You know what it sounds like to me, Prince? It sounds like you are stuck between a decision you want to make and a decision you _should_ make because society dictates blah blah blah.” Zuko’s brow tightens and his eyes narrow, but he’s still not looking at her, so she’s got it right on the nose. “You know what I say to that? Why _pretend_. If you’re going to be disloyal, just do it.” Zuko’s knuckles tighten on the railing until they’re blooming white. “Don’t waste time trying to be a good person. The truth has a way of showing itself one way or another. If it’s really as important to capture the Avatar as you say it is,” Sora’s tone makes it clear that it is decidedly _not_ , “I’m sure your uncle would understand. And its like you said: a prince is nothing without his honor. Sacrifices in the name of such must be made.” Towards the end, Sora doesn’t even try to hide her sarcasm, and turns to the prince for his reaction.

Sora expects angry, berated, or apologetic. She does _not_ expect confused.

“Wait. You think that I _want_ to leave my uncle?”

Okay. Now Sora is confused too.

“I- yes? You are worried that the Avatar is getting away?”

Zuko doesn’t deign to answer this. A new conviction is taking over him: whatever anguish or indecision is replaced by fiery determination. It looks exactly the same when he’s angry. How many times has Sora mistaken one for the other? He turns to where the soldiers are still lurking on the stairwell. Min and the other she doesn’t know duck, but Tao and Lei are too slow. “The two of you. Yes, I’m talking to _you,_ ” Zuko barks, when the they pretend to look behind them like _he couldn’t possibly be talking about us?_ “Come with me. Prepare the komodo rhinos. We are finding my uncle, and he is coming back to this ship, whether he is ready or not.”

Sora watches dumbstruck as the crew bustles at Zuko’s beck and call, who is spurring on his departure by scolding someone for not having his armor at the ready. He declares he’ll do it himself if the crew is so incompetent and stomps off to his room. Shou carefully skirts around the commotion and sidles up to her. “What did you even say?” he says in quiet awe.

“I’m not entirely sure. Since when did we have rhinos?”

“Uh, since forever.”

“And I thought I searched nearly every inch of this ship.”

“I am pretending I did not hear that.” They both observe as a party is readied within minutes, and Zuko takes off with two other rhinos flanking him. “Think he would have really left without the General? It would have been real mess. Half the ship might have raised a mutiny.”

Sora chews her lip. She’s still trying to process the tail end of their conversation. Had she fundamentally misunderstood something? Misheard? Ultimately, Sora can only tell Shou the truth- that she doesn’t have the faintest idea.

* * *

“ _UNCLE!”_ Zuko bursts through the brush into a clearing about where he last saw his uncle earlier that day. It took a moment for him to recognize it; the water was long gone now, the earth had caved in around the pools, and with nothing to hold it, the water bled back into the ground. In its place was a pile of disturbed rock, trees and earth. “Uncle,” he calls again, “where are you?”

“Sir,” one of the soldiers spoke. “Maybe he thought you left without him.”

Zuko panics for a moment, thinking that maybe his uncle had really believed Zuko’s threat, or worse, he was trapped somewhere beneath the rock. But his uncle wasn’t _that_ old or slow, and could move quite nimbly if he wanted to.

To be honest, Zuko had expected to come to this clearing finding his uncle in the midst of a fat nap or something equally inane. Zuko would have yelled at him for holding everyone up, then dragged him back to the ship so they could all be on their merry way. Zuko can’t quite believe this scenario where his uncle had just _left_ , especially without any indication of where.

“Something’s not right here,” Zuko mutters. He kneels down by the pool his uncle was bathing in (ew, ew). At first glance, the ‘rock slide’ looked like any other, but upon closer inspection, the placement looked unnatural. “Look at this pile of rocks.”

“It looks like there’s been a landslide, sir,” one of the soldiers says.

_Real shit?_ Zuko doesn’t say, because it isn’t constructive and won’t get his uncle back. To spell out the obvious for these idiots, he gestures to the unusual shape of one of the rocks. “Here.” Instead of breaking off or falling, it looks abnormally uniform, like it was pushed up from the earth. Earthbenders. “Land doesn’t slide _uphill_.” His uncle could only have been taken against his will, but what is unclear is how much the earthbenders know about their prisoner, and whether they are soldiers or bounty hunters. “My uncle has been captured by earthbenders.”

Zuko straightens. They have nearly a three-hour start, at least, but with any luck he can track them. Earthbenders aren’t known for being particularly stealthy, and even from here Zuko can see where the branches are broken from a hasty retreat.

“Return to the ship,” Zuko commands his soldiers. “Tell them to stand by, but don’t leave the engines running. I’m going after my uncle, but I don’t know how long I’ll be.” He grabs the reigns of his Komodo-rhino and swings up into the saddle.

He turns to level the two soldiers with a warning glare. He doesn’t even know which ones these are, anonymous under the masks. “And let me make this perfectly clear. If that girl escapes, remember that while you work under Iroh, you will answer to me. Understood?”

They say “yes sir” and “understood sir” at the same time. Zuko clucks at his rhino and takes off at a full gallop through the brush.

When the prince is well and truly out of sight, Tao bumps his elbow into his friend’s side. “Hey, Lei. Twenty yuans the girl escapes by tomorrow.”

The other soldier considers this.

“Is that midnight tonight, or midnight tomorrow?”

“Midnight tomorrow.”

“Then I raise you twenty yuans that she escapes by tomorrow at noon, and another twenty that she sneaks out quietly.”

Tao guffaws. “As if. My bet she escapes in the most egregiously flamboyant manner possible. And I accept your deal.”

They shake on it.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Sora has ~daddy issues~  
> Also I am living for the crew treating the Sora and Zuko dynamic as a source of entertainment that they kick back and watch.
> 
> And as this is a bit of a shorter chapter, I added in some art of Sora and Zuko. I didn't have the strength to draw him with a ponytail, so I guess this is future Sora and Zuko ;)  
> If you want to follow my art account im @palzue on instagram, but I don't really post fanart there.
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!


	7. Chicken Lizard

“He’s done _what_?”

Ohhh. Oh. Sora can already feel the oncoming headache. First Zuko goes running off like a man possessed, then Lei and Tao return without him and announce that General Iroh has been _kidnapped_ by _earthbenders,_ and that the prince has gone off after them. Zuko, Sora thinks, must be afraid that without the general, the ship would not be loyal to him, a disgraced prince. This is how she has conciled with Zuko’s rather odd change of heart last night. If that prince gives a damn about anything besides regaining his honor, she’ll firebend.

Sora pinches the tension forming between her brows. For someone rather calculative and logical, Zuko could certainly be _reckless._ “Let me get this straight. _You_ idiots decided to just let him go after a patrol of earth kingdom soldiers? Alone? After dark?”

Lei frowns. “How do you know they’re soldiers?”

 _These_ are the men that honor and serve the illustrious Dragon of the West? “C’mon, Lei, think! We’re on the coast closest to the Fire Nation border- It’s practically a warzone! This place is crawling with scouts and patrols, not to mention our ship is a sitting turtle-duck that just screams ‘enemy vessel’. If Zu- if the prince is lucky he’ll only have to deal with a small patrol, but even with Iroh, he’s outnumbered! It’s not exactly the most tactically sound strategy.” Ah, this _really_ pisses Sora off. No prince means no ship, and no ship means she’s gonna have to find some other way to the avatar. And if the rumors about the flying bison are true, she’s not going to catch up to them on foot. Damn.

“So? What are you going to do?” Tao and Lei lean in to her expectantly.

Sora eyes them skeptically. “Uh, nothing? Go mope in my bed and pray that those idiots come back in one piece?” As if Sora is suddenly responsible for cleaning up the mess these Fire Nation geniuses have made. Why couldn’t she find some nice earth nation prince to be captured by? Someone who _wasn’t_ being actively hunted on both sides of the war.

Tao turns to Lei and raises a brow.

“Shut it,” Lei says. “I still have half a day. And just so you know,” he addresses Sora solemnly, “I’m a very heavy sleeper. In fact, so is most of the ship. It’s very hard to hear anything when the cook is snoring louder than a sabertooth wolf tiger-”

Tao smacks Lei, who attempts to look faux offended. “That’s cheating!” Tao hisses.

“It’s called securing my investment” Lei protests.

“Okay,” Sora interrupts. She isn’t in a good enough mood to deal with whatever fresh nonsense Tao and Lei cooked up. “I’ll leave you two-“ she gestures with her hands in their general direction “-to whatever _that_ is, while I go knock out on my cot, because that damn generator is _finally off._ ”

Tao waves cheerily as Sora turns and walks away. “Make sure you sleep soundly, Sora! You’ll need all the rest you can have for tomorrow!”

Lei snorts. “ _Now_ look who’s talking.”

* * *

Zuko rides hard throughout the night until the sky grows lighter and lighter, and the stars dim and disappear from the sky. The sun is just beginning to peak above the treeline, blinding him every now and then when it catches him at the right angle.

The long night is starting to catch up to him. His eyes are dry and blurry, and more than once he’s had to backtrack when he lost the trail by spacing out on the back of his komodo-rhino. At least with the sun climbing higher in the sky, he can feel the fire in his blood stirring. If it doesn’t make him less exhausted, it at least makes him feel more awake.

And Zuko _can’t_ rest, because the earthbenders _will_. Because then it’s not a matter of outrunning the earthbenders, it’s outlasting them. This is a test of endurance, and Zuko _won’t_ lose.

All he has to do is _wake. Up._

Easier said than done. He breaks intermittently to stretch his legs (his ass and thighs are so sore, the komodo-rhinos aren’t known for their smooth gate), to do a few push-ups, and some morning firebending forms his uncle taught him. But the breaks are more and more frequent as he feels his eyes droop lower and lower…

Zuko almost misses it; he’s so focused on keeping his eyes open, he isn’t paying attention to what his eyes are focusing _on._ The sandal nearly blends in to the dirt and dry grasses on the side of the road.

Zuko does the dumb thing and sniffs it, and gags. If there was any doubt before, there certainly isn’t now. He isn’t proud that he can recognize his uncle’s fungal foot smell, but at least it comes in handy. Footy. Agh, now is NOT the time to be having an embarrassing internal dialogue.

The question remains of what his uncle is trying to tell him- the footprints (ostrich horses, if Zuko hazards a guess) aren’t exactly subtle, so it couldn’t be a sign for Zuko to follow. Maybe to let him know he’s going the right direction? To reassure Zuko he’s alive? If so, it was little consolation. Zuko couldn’t afford to have that doubt in the first place. He wouldn’t allow himself to think that way.

Zuko remounts his rhino and clucks it into a sterner pace. It was still hard to keep up, but this reminder allowed Zuko to push through his exhaustion and remain vigilant. Maybe that was all his uncle really meant in the first place. To remind him.

Just like his uncle to baby Zuko even while captured by earthbenders. The irritation at the thought spurs him on. As if Zuko needed help. He was getting close. It was only a matter of time.

* * *

Dawn breaks on the ship, the prince doesn’t return, and it just gets worse from there.

Sora’s wakes up feeling crummy, first off. Just one of those days you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. She thinks to maybe go and join Iroh for his breakfast tea, which is in reality a poor excuse to jeer at Zuko during his morning exercises. But then she remembers neither of them are here, and makes her mood even more sour.

Then, Shou is right on her ass the moment she steps out of her room. _Literally_ the moment. He’s leaned up against the wall next to her door, but he scrambles to attention when she opens it.

 _Very_ suspicious. “Waiting long, Shou?”

“Yes. No!” His voice cracks. “Let’s- I was going to say, er, we should have breakfast together?”

Her original plans were to get some air on the upper deck, but Shou so rarely asks for time with her. Even with such clearly ulterior motives, she can’t resist. She squishes her hands to her cheeks in mock embarrassment. “Daw, _Shou_. You know just how to charm a girl.”

“No I don’t”

“I’m _blushing_.”

“No you’re not.”

She loops an arm around Shou’s stiff elbow. “I hope you’re fine eating standing up, because it’ll be awfully hard to sit down with that stick up your ass!” She says cheerily. “Let’s go!”

Only once she’s dragging him down the hallway, Shou squawking in indignation, does she consider the side of the door Shou stationed himself- coincidentally blocking the exit to the upper deck.

Ah. So _that’s_ what this is about.

With the general captured and the prince out of the picture, Shou isn’t the only one who expects her to make a grand escape. For some reason, everyone has decided that it’s only a matter of time before Sora jumps ship. She has half of them lunging for their swords when she so much as twitches, and the other half find the whole situation endlessly amusing. She is about sixty percent sure that Tao and Lei have a bet pool running in the barracks.

In contrast, no one seems particularly concerned that their two commanding officers, a boy who is technically fire nation royalty and an old man is _officially_ fire nation royalty, are respectively chasing and being held hostage by enemy soldiers. She wishes that these busybodies would worry about this objectively more urgent matter than say, _her_ , because the whole thing is getting pretty tedious. And by busybodies, she means Shou, whose current ministrations (pai sho games, bringing her food and tea, blabbing about fireworks) include anything and everything that distracts her from the alluring call of cannonballing off the side of the ship. If she drowns, so much the better, it would be infinitely more interesting than bumming around on deck. In a better mood, she would appreciate Shou being at her every beck and call, but as of today, it just feels like manhandling. And Sora _hates_ manhandling.

So while Sora hadn’t _originally_ planned on an escape, oh, she’s certainly thinking about it now.

But that would be counter-productive to her whole goal of finding the avatar. She needs this ship. And much as she loathes to admit it, she needs that damn prince. But somehow, the thought of just moping around doesn’t sit well in her stomach.

“-Sora, earth to Sora, _hello_ , it’s your move! Hey!”

Right, _right_. She’s playing a game with Shou. There’s no room in her thoughts for firebending idiots. “What, it’s finally my turn? Must have fallen asleep, it took you so long.”

Shou frowns. “My turn ended ages ago.”

Sora knows this particular expression of Shou’s. He’s either about to say something very unexpected or very thickheaded. This time, it’s both.

“Are you thinking about the prince, Sora?”

It’s so out of left field that she inhales a little too quickly and swallows a bit of her spit down the wrong chute. What follows is an awkward splutter of coughs where Sora is trying to make it seem like she’s not stalling while dislodging the awkward tickle in her throat. “What! _No_!” she squawks. Stellar execution, Sora. To cover, she snaps up one of Shou’s white lilies with a sailboat. “There. Your turn.”

Shou’s frown deepens. “Well, you certainly weren’t thinking about the game.” Sora winces as he proceeds to wipe half the board with a white jade tile. How did she miss that?

Dammit, Shou might actually win this game. A first. The hell is _with_ her today?

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Her eyes flick to his face, which is determined but tentative. She snorts. Sure, she’ll play along, even she has no plans along the lines of what Shou is thinking. “As if you could make it any less obvious. Everyone jumps if I so much as twitch my pinky finger. What, you gonna miss me when I’m gone?”

“Not for a moment, Sora,” he says blithely.

“Ah, I get it,” she teases. “You make a bet with Tao or Lei or something? C’mon, if you tell me the conditions, I’ll split the winnings with you.”

Shou’s face screws into confusion. “People are gambling? On _you?”_

She resists the urge to palm her face. Leave it to Shou to be sharp and oblivious at the same time.

“Just, never mind. I have no intention of skipping off into the sunset, never to return, so you can cool it.”

Shou stares at her, deadpan. “What?” She says irritably.

“It was never a question of you coming back, Sora. I know you would. If you wanted to run away, you would have been gone the second we spotted the shoreline.” As if these weren’t the two most confounding sentences Shou could have uttered, he then fails to elaborate.

“I- what?” Sora splutters. “’Never a question of coming back?’ What does THAT mean?”

Shou chews his lip. Now he looks _sheepish_ , the scoundrel. “Well, you were thinking of going after the prince, weren’t you?”

“…ah,” Sora answers, stupidly. It wasn’t that the thought _hadn’t_ crossed her mind, it was more that there was no conceivable way Sora would act on it. For all her bluster, she isn’t really one to take initiative. In this situation, the best course was to wait and hope for the best. What would come of a wild goose chase? Best to let things resolve on its own.

Sora laughs, and she’s surprised to find its bitter. “Trust me, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m no hero.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Shou shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “What do you think is going to happen to the General?”

Sora isn’t sure what to think about this change in topic. On one hand, it is much preferable to the previous one, which left her a floundering a bit, even if she doesn’t know why. On the other hand… Well, Shou is one of the few soldiers that actually seem concerned about their leadership’s welfare.

“Best case,” she mulls, “if the soldiers recognize him, they’ll hightail it straight back to back to Ba Sing Se. They’ll probably hold him ransom, try to get the Fire Nation off their back. Worst case… they kill him.” _If he isn’t dead already,_ Sora doesn’t say.

“Maybe he’ll escape,” Shou says.

Sora doesn’t want to shatter his hopes, so she settles for a thin smile and a doubtful “yeah, maybe.”

Maybe it’s Shou’s carefully crafted mask she knows is hiding real worry, or maybe just voicing it out loud that makes her realize: _she might never see that old man again_. 

She wasn’t going to be staying on this ship much longer. She’s not sure what sort of dynamic it would bring if the prince came back without the general, but it probably wouldn’t put her in a beneficial position. That is, if the prince came back at all. She would move on, like she always did. Like her dad taught her to. It was fine.

And it _is_ fine. She just has to wait out this sudden impulsiveness to do _something_ , to not sit around and worry. It would be so easy to just storm off the ship and track down Zuko and Iroh before they never come back. Sora can run fast, fast as any wind. On a rhino, she could be faster. And earthbender soldiers are only ever headed back to one place: Ba Sing Se. It would be a cinch.

That doesn’t mean Sora is going to _do_ it.

* * *

Whoever crafted the metaphor of nosy old women in a sewing circles has never been on the vessel of a Fire Nation ship. There’s nothing like an isolated floating tin can to make you suddenly interested in _anything_ besides where you are right now. Before curfew, the soldiers often gather to tell stories in the engine room, funny anecdotes, petty grievances of ship life. With the right storyteller, something like a sword lost over the side of the boat could entertain them for a few hours, the prince’s latest outburst could capture people’s attention for the whole night.

The spectacle of Sora’s escape was told for _weeks_.

No one knows how Sora got into the komodo-rhino pens. Shou swears up and down that “she was just _there_ one moment and gone the next!” However Sora snuck down to the pens, everyone knew when she was coming back up.

As it turns out, the hallways are just wide enough to fit a komodo-rhino and not much else. To keep her legs from being pulverized between the ribs of her rampaging mount and the walls, Sora was practically lying prone on the back of the rhino, the only thing keeping her from flying off was her tight grip on the reigns and sheer luck.

“Out of the _way!_ ” She shouts to no one in particular, because anyone that sees a komodo-rhino charging full speed with little room to deviate from its path doesn’t even need to be told once. The crew is too busy getting out of the way to do anything to stop her, and soon Sora and her rhino are bounding up the stairs to the upper deck. Taking a thousand kilos of komodo rhino is risky up most stairs, but this ship is the finest Fire Nation engineering, if a bit outdated. Something snaps worryingly as she’s launched up, but it can’t be too terrible if she’s yet to fall off.

Here’s how they tell it, embellished in all its glory: the sun is setting behind her, casting her and the rhino all in dark shadow, an intimidating war mount. There’s a pregnant pause right as she stops to take in her surroundings, the rhino puffing and snorting and pawing at the ground.

No one dares to stand in her path, but one. The hero, henceforth named ‘He Who is No Chicken Lizard’ (shut up, Tao, I’m getting to why in a minute). The shrimp of the ship, shaking in his boots, a spear pointed at the villain. “I’m not letting you off this ship, Sora! I’ll be mopping the deck for weeks if you do!”

She laughs, cold and icy as the north pole, caring naught for Shou’s free time or honor. “So we’re playing Chicken Lizard? That’s my favorite game! You know why?”

Shou gulps so audibly, you’d swear he had one of the cook’s famous rice balls stuck in his throat.

“It’s because,” she says, a maniacal grin crawling across her face, “everyone knows I’m crazy enough to never back down.”

She digs her heel into the komodo rhinos’ side, and it goes charging, building up speed, headed straight for poor Shou, who’s so paralyzed with fear he still has the spear pointed straight at them, and Sora shows no sign of slowing down, and when they’re about to crash Shou squeezes his eyes shut and shouts at the top of his lungs “I AIN’T NO CHICKEN LIZARD-“

Just as Sora swerves at the last second and goes leaping off the side of the ship.

No one sees quite what happens next- all the soldiers go running towards the side of the ship as soon as Sora flies off, and the only one close enough to really see is too shocked by being an inch shy of trampled to turn around. The fall to the ground is too far to make it unscathed, even when you’re not on the back of a beast ten times your weight. Yet somehow Sora makes it to the ground and they land running, seemingly no worse for wear, tearing forward into the forest until the sound of trampling rhino dies out.

As for Tao and Lei and the nature of their bet, they break even.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although I wanted part of this fic’s focus to be Zuko’s growth as a character because its so damn INTERESTING, there is an embarrassing lack of Zuko and Sora interactions. I hope that Sora is an interesting enough character on her own to make up for this, because I PROMISE this will be remedied once these two idiots get over themselves, but in the meantime please enjoy Sora inciting chaos instead.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry but some of the parts of this chapter are sloppy and unedited, but I figured it was high time that I actually posted this chapter. I'll probably come back later to edit it better, but at least its out there.
> 
> kudos and comments are appreciated!


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